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small butter posted:It was a blowout. Democrats had the history of the "party in power losing seats in the midterm" going against them, and when you couple it with generational inflation, constant talk of recession, stock market making new lows in October, and fear mongering about crime (which worked in NY), Democrats should have been absolutely trounced. Instead, they lost the House by a couple of seats, gained legislatures and governorships and got +1 in the Senate. I would recommend not using kayfabe performances by loud-mouthed maniacs as your barometer of success when material circumstances exist. e: and your understanding of the circumstances may be different than mine, but having another term of "lets gently caress up the government and shut all this poo poo down" is not at all positive for my goals. Gerund fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 16:46
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small butter posted:Democrats had the history of the "party in power losing seats in the midterm" going against them,
More relevant to 2022 analysis is that multiple seats were won by the GOP using challenged maps that have since been found to be illegally gerrymandered but were not yet adjudicated thanks to the Court's novel application of Purcell... and many more, enough to be determinative, would have been blocked under Shelby County and would still have been blocked despite that ruling if the SCOTUS majority wasn't populated by 3/5ths fetishists.
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Nov 15, 2023 16:52
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small butter posted:It was a blowout. Democrats had the history of the "party in power losing seats in the midterm" going against them, and when you couple it with generational inflation, constant talk of recession, stock market making new lows in October, and fear mongering about crime (which worked in NY), Democrats should have been absolutely trounced. Instead, they lost the House by a couple of seats, gained legislatures and governorships and got +1 in the Senate. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The pollsters and pundits made wild predictions, and then when those predictions turned out to be wrong, they said that the Democrats overperformed (when what really happened is that their own predictive power underperformed). A blowout is when the Dems win a lot of seats, not when you predict they're going to lose a lot of seats and turn out to be wrong. The Dems are barely scraping by right now. Sure, it certainly looks like the circumstances favor a Democratic victory in 2024. But the number one lesson of the past few elections has been that we are terrible at predicting the result of elections. The pollsters are flailing and the punditry are wildly inaccurate.
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Nov 15, 2023 17:06
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Discendo Vox posted:Detailed investigative reporting in the Washington Post using what's now a well-characterized story format- an individual tragedy is used to humanize a nation-scale policy issue, in this case the lack of consistent regulation of home births and midwives. I have no idea why midwives in their current form are allowed to exist. This Carr woman is learning how to deliver babies through her mistakes that cause babies to die. All while refusing medical assistance for people who have been convinced by her that they don't need real medical help. Edit: I mean isn't the whole reason we train medical professionals so we don't have to keep learning how to treat patients through trial and error once a procedure is established. quote:Carr said in her applications that she had changed her views on licensing, believing it was important to move the field forward. 9 Maybe I should have had some training... quote:Carr conceded that some of her records were not written contemporaneously. She said that since Sophie’s death, she had taken a class to improve her documentation. Maybe I should have learned how to take the proper information for a birth.... abravemoose posted:I read this yesterday and what stood out to me is that I've encountered one of the non-Carr midwives mentioned in the article. I met her during some routine care a few years ago. It seems that particular one acted as an observer in one of the stories. Nothing strange stood out about that certified nurse midwife and we've met quite a few CNMs over the years also. What does the midwife do in the hospital birth situation? Are they more there for moral support and encouragement or do they engage in actual medical procedures? I can understand having midwives as a kind of liason for pregnant women and hospitals but not much beyond that. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 17:27
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gurragadon posted:What does the midwife do in the hospital birth situation? Are they more there for moral support and encouragement or do they engage in actual medical procedures? I can understand having midwives as a kind of liason for pregnant women and hospitals but not much beyond that. I think that situation is about having a homebirth-like experience but also real medical intervention is 15 seconds away down the hall instead of a multi-mile ambulance ride
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Nov 15, 2023 17:29
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A big contribution to the concern is doctors and prenatal care is very expensive. The majority of births are without complication, naturally, so the appeal of a midwife is that they're someone who can get you through the process without a five figure hospital bill.
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Nov 15, 2023 17:53
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gurragadon posted:I have no idea why midwives in their current form are allowed to exist. This Carr woman is learning how to deliver babies through her mistakes that cause babies to die. All while refusing medical assistance for people who have been convinced by her that they don't need real medical help. It can vary a bit. A midwife in the hospital can be almost like a Physician's Assistant and be more involved in the birth, where as the OB/GYN could be stopping by every few hours to check the progress until the baby is ready to be born, the midwife would be there much more often and a better resource for the parents. They could also be like Doula where they (the good ones) have a medical background and are able to help translate what's going on between the parents and the medical team. Plus they act as an advocate for the parents and can help you make better informed decisions. They also know all sorts of tricks to help the mother handle delivery better. Giving birth in the US is a pretty lovely process, so I can understand why people would want to avoid it and just do an at home birth. But in reality it's a stupid idea and just shouldn't happen. The real solution is we need more compassionate and better care in Maternity Wards. A lot of time Mothers can feel railroaded into a C-Section. Which then turns into a long and painful recovery period. It makes caring and bonding with the baby a lot more difficult at a very vulnerable time for both.
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Nov 15, 2023 17:55
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Morrow posted:get you through the process without a five figure hospital bill. Lmao drat America
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Nov 15, 2023 18:00
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People rave about how great our insurance is for childbirth because it’s handled differently than other expenses. Our out of pocket was about $8k. This is the good part of our poo poo insurance.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:03
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We just got the bill and it was ~$1,200. Maybe there’s another waiting in the wings but it was itemized for baby and mom’s stay and care.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:05
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For some actual numbers: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/average-childbirth-cost/ quote:Giving birth costs $18,865 on average, including pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care
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Nov 15, 2023 18:07
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Morrow posted:A big contribution to the concern is doctors and prenatal care is very expensive. The majority of births are without complication, naturally, so the appeal of a midwife is that they're someone who can get you through the process without a five figure hospital bill. To the best of my Google home births have risen from 0.5% to almost 3% in Denmark over the last decade while it's still less than 1.5% in the US. So I think other factors than cost make it appealing to some parents. Intimacy, naturalness, control, woo etc. And probably some distrust of medical professionals, modern medicine and hospitals. I would suspect middle to upper class white women are over-represented in the category.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:16
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Morrow posted:For some actual numbers: That's the price of freedom  It costs less than $60 to have a baby in Finland. How? quote:Dr. Aydin Tekay is the chief physician at a labor ward in Finland where every mother there gets a private room and even the option of a water birth. The cost? Less than $100 euros, and almost 50 percent of which they'll get back as reimbursement. That means it costs less than $60 to have a baby, compared with the U.S. where the average natural birth costs over $12,000 and insurance doesn't cover all of it. Tekay said there's no reason the U.S. can't replicate what Finland is doing. He blames U.S. politics.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:16
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When the EOB shows $8k taken off the bill as the negotiated price with the insurance company you can instantly come to realize that the numbers are fake.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:17
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gurragadon posted:I have no idea why midwives in their current form are allowed to exist. This Carr woman is learning how to deliver babies through her mistakes that cause babies to die. All while refusing medical assistance for people who have been convinced by her that they don't need real medical help. In our case the midwife took the place of the doctor during the delivery, supported by staff nurses. No doctors entered the delivery room. It was years ago so I've forgotten the names of some things. The process went:
Enter the room and get in the bed Staff nurse inserts an empty IV (I don't know a better term) in case of an emergency Gives what looks like a slip of paper to soften the cervix Staff nurse asks what she needs, like some sleep med ("It's gonna be while!") it was not "a while" The nurses and midwives come in to check status, dilation, discuss comfort and positions every hour Heart rates of baby and wife and contractions are monitored remotely at a central nurse station Everything proceeds normally, my wife says she feels ready to deliver Midwife has some equipment: balls, stools, handles (?) in case my wife wants to deliver standing Midwife take the position of the doctor at this point (I assume) and catches the baby
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Nov 15, 2023 18:19
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Main Paineframe posted:This is exactly what I'm talking about. The pollsters and pundits made wild predictions, and then when those predictions turned out to be wrong, they said that the Democrats overperformed (when what really happened is that their own predictive power underperformed). The Democrats oveperformed not just the polls but their circumstances. Yes, the polls were wrong, but this was the best Democratic midterm showing while having the White House in generations. Again, this is while everything that I mentioned happening, including people feeling poor as hell during the highest inflation of my lifetime. It's true that the polls haven't been great as predictors, but election wins in the prior year have been. I've posted the link before showing that special election wins in the prior year being strongly correlated with general election wins (at least in the House, which translates to the White House). We are +11 on those. That, and the trend of Democrats winning every single season except 2021 since 2017 (and yes, I am counting them "winning" in 2022 given the circumstances and winning everything except the House). To the other poster: you don't have to look at kayfabe from Republican loudmouths. You can just look at r/conservative and other spaces - they were all having a meltdown because it was their election to lose, and if they can barely get a few seats (while losing everything else) in 2022, what hope do they have for 2024? Edit: the last time there was a significant difference between special election asvantage and the next election was 1998. This is probably related to the impeachment hearings that soured voters (and the booming economy) in the 1-2 year span. small butter fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 18:32
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https://twitter.com/EricMGarcia/status/1724851757904265287 Sure, sure but what about? https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1724850080098799653 Honestly, "not as bad as the Democrats" and "preventing the government from doing anything" are strong Republican values.
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Nov 15, 2023 19:34
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/EricMGarcia/status/1724851757904265287 I am curious if they do actually try to oust johnson. I dont think the dems go along with it this time unless johnsons fucks around, but we will see.
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Nov 15, 2023 19:39
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dioxazine posted:san francisco this morning
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Nov 15, 2023 19:51
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/EricMGarcia/status/1724851757904265287 Another free Democratic ad.
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Nov 15, 2023 19:58
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Nenonen posted:That's the price of freedom Sacrificing literal babies on the altar of capitalism 
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Nov 15, 2023 20:30
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gurragadon posted:What does the midwife do in the hospital birth situation? Are they more there for moral support and encouragement or do they engage in actual medical procedures? I can understand having midwives as a kind of liason for pregnant women and hospitals but not much beyond that. Our experience was relatively quick and uncomplicated but I remember the midwives handling all the prenatal checkups, the delivery (with the aid of nurses) and even some basic things like stitches. The doctor didn’t come through for initial checkup until afterwards. We were in a hospital though and appreciated the proximity to doctors if we needed them. Was overall a very positive experience both times.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:05
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small butter posted:The Democrats oveperformed not just the polls but their circumstances. Yes, the polls were wrong, but this was the best Democratic midterm showing while having the White House in generations. Again, this is while everything that I mentioned happening, including people feeling poor as hell during the highest inflation of my lifetime. It's also worth remembering the reason the Democrats outperformed expectations in 2022/3. Republicans had turnout advantages (not 2014 level, but still significant) but Democrats had a historically good midterm because of Trump voters defecting over Dobbs and election denial. If you threw out junk like Trafalgar, the polls did okay at predicting that. The poll pundits aren't saying that's going to reverse. In Nate Cohn's scenario, Biden does well with the 2020 Trump voters who voted for Democrats in 2022, but Trump wins because of a turnout surge from (largely young and nonwhite) 2020 Biden voters who skipped the midterm.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:19
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I am curious if they do actually try to oust johnson. I dont think the dems go along with it this time unless johnsons fucks around, but we will see. Why would they not break out the popcorn and enjoy the show?
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Nov 15, 2023 21:32
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Part of the point of the wapo article is that different states have different regulations regarding midwife practices and certs. The underlying statistic, the greater mortality associated with home birth, is the immediate cause of harm. The lack of consistent and sufficient regulation is the first step up the causal chain. The further step above that is the overarching existence of midwives as a quasi-professionalized intervening professional industry operating between medicine and patient, like nutritionist/dietitians. These man-in-the-middle categories, by their lack of regulation, both justify themselves through, and exacerbate, the costs and harms of care. There's a whole separate discussion to be had here about medical credentials, education, specialization, nursing and doctors generally...but in this specific context, the fact that a subset of the practitioner area is so ludicrously underregulated makes that part of the policy calculus easier to decide.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:57
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The whole lack of meaningful healthcare for expectant mothers also impacts people of color way more than white people. quote:
Just another one of those things that when you break it down by the racial groups you begin to realize it’s much worse for everyone who isn’t white. The way the US functions particularly in relation to healthcare outcomes just isn’t sustainable. And we still pay way more for our lovely healthcare than other industrialized nations. Doesn’t seem like anything is going to change anytime soon.
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Nov 15, 2023 23:17
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If one of the largest pandemics in world history couldn't change our dogshit healthcare system, nothing will Just amazing to me that there was really no discussion during or even as we were recovering from the pandemic about healthcare reform. This as doctors and nurses were either dying from Covid or getting burned out from the work and quitting at alarming rates. I've just accepted that it's not going to change in my lifetime because the system is just too controlled through regulatory capture.
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Nov 16, 2023 01:42
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It's not even regulatory capture as much as public opinion capture. The average person isn't thrilled with their insurance but is able to get the healthcare they want and have it mostly covered. Our average out of pocket spending is high - 60% higher than average - but it's not quite as outrageous as a lot of our healthcare metrics are. (It might be worse than that if out of pocket expenses are especially regressive - i.e., high earners are unlikely to have any because of gold-plated insurance - but I don't know how that actually breaks out in the numbers. A lot of rich people just pay for everything out of pocket because why not.) "The donors" don't want any reform that hits the bottom line, but the only point of the donor money (unless you're Duncan Hunter) is to get votes, so if public opinion was really as overwhelming as people seem to think it is, or should be, we'd be seeing faster action. For people who don't get insurance from work the system is a nightmare, but a majority of people do, and for them it's... kind of okay. The result is a public that wants "reform" but also has terrible loss aversion and is afraid of a government program making everything worse. So for every person who is undercovered or overextended, there's two guys who think it's pretty all right and don't want to rock the boat. Demand for reform is also depressed on the other end by Medicaid making things all right for the very poor, in states that do a good job implementing it, anyway. An aside: the ACA has reduced the growth in US healthcare spending (as it was designed and projected to do) and the gap between us and the rest of the world, while still gigantic, is closing a bit.   My point here is very much extremely not "everything is okay!" but rather than the perception of the US healthcare system as a dumpster fire is not a universal one, or even a majority one. Most people are not aware of either the large number of people in the US who are totally screwed by our system, or the fact that other countries manage to avoid that pitfall with ease. In making the case for any kind of healthcare reform you have to deal with those facts.
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Nov 16, 2023 02:14
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FlamingLiberal posted:If one of the largest pandemics in world history couldn't change our dogshit healthcare system, nothing will Plenty of things have changed and can change involving healthcare, just like every other area of policy. The specifics of how laws pass and how policies are implemented still matter - "the pandemic" isn't the mechanism by which bills pass. Throwing up your hands and dismissing the possibility of change, or discussing the specifics of what should be changed, or how, is no more meritorious when you do it than when the underregulated parties insist upon it.
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Nov 16, 2023 02:36
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Misunderstood posted:"The donors" don't want any reform that hits the bottom line, but the only point of the donor money (unless you're Duncan Hunter) is to get votes, so if public opinion was really as overwhelming as people seem to think it is, or should be, we'd be seeing faster action. Support for legalizing marijuana has been over 50% for ten years and is currently hitting 70%. Even among Republicans it's over 50%, and still. The only reason we got anything out of the pandemic was it hit fast and hard enough there was a very brief window where Fear was more powerful than Greed, but they've learned their lesson and won't be making that mistake again.
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Nov 16, 2023 03:09
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Legalizing cannabis is tremendously popular with industry and the public, which is why it made its way into the farm bill years ago- it was the product of billions of dollars and decades of industrial advocacy. The reason it hasn't actually fully moved forward into a regulated product is because, again, the specifics of how it would operate matter. Competing industrial interests want different regulatory regimes that will benefit them- all as the public health consequences of widespread use of cannabis continue to emerge even in that regulatory void. This delays legislative and regulatory action. The other reason it hasn't moved forward is because, again, one party is interested in shutting down all government functions. Even universally popular, industry-friendly laws don't move through the Republicans. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 03:17
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There is one major faction blocking marijuana reform and legalization: law enforcement. Partly this is for legacy reasons (senior officers and politicians who built their careers off drug crime prosecutions would have to admit their careers were a mistake), partly because "I smell weed, gotta search" is law enforcement's skeleton key past the Fourth Amendment, partly because drug related property seizures still fund a lot of police departments, and partly because in some areas it's still seen as a way to lock up left leaning college kids and black people. None of those are *good* reasons, they're all awful, and there *is* significant industry pushback but in the areas where pot still is not legal, those are the reasons why.
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Nov 16, 2023 03:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There is one major faction blocking marijuana reform and legalization: law enforcement. Partly this is for legacy reasons (senior officers and politicians who built their careers off drug crime prosecutions would have to admit their careers were a mistake), partly because "I smell weed, gotta search" is law enforcement's skeleton key past the Fourth Amendment, partly because drug related property seizures still fund a lot of police departments, and partly because in some areas it's still seen as a way to lock up left leaning college kids and black people.
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Nov 16, 2023 03:49
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https://twitter.com/chuckmodi1/status/1724960432203464810?s=46 I was too young to see the Iraq War protests. Did any of this happen then?
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Nov 16, 2023 03:58
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theCalamity posted:https://twitter.com/chuckmodi1/status/1724960432203464810?s=46 Oh yeah, and worse. Also God drat I'm getting old
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Nov 16, 2023 04:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There is one major faction blocking marijuana reform and legalization: law enforcement. Partly this is for legacy reasons (senior officers and politicians who built their careers off drug crime prosecutions would have to admit their careers were a mistake), partly because "I smell weed, gotta search" is law enforcement's skeleton key past the Fourth Amendment, partly because drug related property seizures still fund a lot of police departments, and partly because in some areas it's still seen as a way to lock up left leaning college kids and black people. FlamingLiberal posted:Not just that but also the private prison industry. There are bed quotas that these companies have with states/municipalities. No, they are not "blocking" reform or legalization. State law enforcement and the prison industry are not players in the actual legal processes involved in either the FDA-DEA rescheduling and approval administrative processes or Congressional committees that have power here. The primary conflict is between different pharma, direct market, dietary supplement and ag entities trying to ensure that the approvals process gives them preferential access, either through Congress or through the agencies. FDA is pushing for new authority and funding to handle this and other oncoming "harm reduction" product categories, before they're saddled with another unfunded mandate to handle new industries fully antagonistic to their basic mission. However it would have shaken out, all of these issues would have been resolved a decade ago if the Republicans hadn't performed autocannibalism. McConnell in particular was instrumental on the USDA side, and now the hemp farming industry that spun up is tearing itself to shreds with oversupply, which is in turn feeding a further industry of products that are unsafe and illegal by any metric. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 05:05
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https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1724942399431217457quote:Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden’s infamous "Letter to America," in which he explained why he attacked the United States. Fortunately, the letter is still available through a government source or at the very least, it’s been archived online. It does hearten me that a lot of people are learning about our involvement in the Middle East
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Nov 16, 2023 05:56
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Misunderstood posted:
I do wonder how much of the reduced healthcare spending stat is due to the massive drop in life expectancy in the United States in the past few years.  Besides the horrid maternal mortality rates plus our drop in life expectancy and increased median age definitely make the US an outlier in industrialized nations. Again, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change anytime soon since both parties largely support the status quo.  I’m sure the more recent maternal mortality rates are much much worse.
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Nov 16, 2023 06:08
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It's not great that a mass conspiracy theory is being spread through tiktok.
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Nov 16, 2023 06:08
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loving lmao at anyone who reads the letter to America and goes "wow they really had a point!"
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Nov 16, 2023 06:24
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