Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "The Humanist Report"
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The Dems could have rallied behind Medicare for All as SIGNATORY POLICY ("Vote us in and we make it happen, the bill is ready !") and send out Sanders to activate the young, and non-voters. They would have killed it in the midterms (MfA polls 51 % with Republicans, plus 80 % with Democratic voters).
Winning back Senate ! and congress would mean effective damage control - and would set them up for a 2020 landslide. When the effects of Medicare for all could be experienced by the population.
They need the Senate - blocking more Supreme court confirmation, not for Trump's impeachment if they are smart. Pence would be worse. Heaven forbid Ruth Bader Ginsburg would need to retire.
But the donors are not having it - so the voters will not get such policies if the Corporate Dems can prevent it. And they certainly will not campaign with such a winning strategy.
They hoped that "Trump, GOP bad, bad - Russia, Russia" would be enough to pull off at least a narrow win (Congress at least). - They are not giving the base anything that would cost the Big Donors (same donors that finance the GOP, at least the industries are the same).
The base on either side gets identitiy politics, abortion, gun regulation and gay rights to be excited about (the GOP uses the same issues plus dog whistles, xenophobia and racism to get their base excited).
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4:40 "Researcher" 1227 deaths in CA (?) associated with corona, for 4,7 million (? for what area). and did they COUNT the numbers of death among undocumented migrants and homeless people (because THAT might drive up the numbers, and these people ALSO are a risk pool, from where the disease can spread).
Edit: they worked with data from they test lab and scaled them up - so not a legitimate way to calculate. the death rates are 5 - 15 % in other countries. (may depend if the older population gets infected, in Italy also the system being overwhelmed. Germany has an old population, but good care, many hospital beds, and they at no point got overwhelmed).
Anyway accepting these numbers would mean 0,027 percent (a little less than 0,03) . so far and with unprecedented measures in place. If memory serves the death rate of flu is 0,01 percent and the complication rate, the time where you have to quarantine, the time needed for recovery is not nearly as high.
Speaking bluntly: you are usually feeling better after 1 week if you have got the flu in almost all cases (and not infectious anymore btw) - or you are dead. Not 3 weeks in hospitals and 2 of them in the ICU. And then you might or might nor survive with or w/o lasting damage to your lungs, complications with blood clots for younger people etc.
That strain of corona virus is MUCH MORE CONTAGIOUS.
Reproduction rate is 1,3 for flu (1 person infects 1,3 others, so there IS growth). Versus 3,5 for corona (or even higher). with no safeguards in place likely higher.
That factor MEANS EXPLOSIVE GROWTH. And we do not have a base immunity (as with flu, even if the strains mutate), we have no vaccination and also no treatment drugs (like we have for flu).
I know the numbers of a European country, Austria. Reproduction rate was estimated to be 3,5 at a time when it was "wash the hands, watch your sneezing / coughing" and no large gatherings.
2,5 immediately before shutdown. Took them 3 weeks to get the reproduction rate down to 1 (ONE infected person infects one another).
And 1 more week to get the numbers down to 0,67 or 0,63.
They are stuck now for 2 - 3 weeks at that rate. So SLOW decrease.
Case numbers, hospital stays etc. are down, but despite the strict measures they do not get the reproduction rate down below 0,6 - 0,7.
They are reopening gradually now: highschoolers (for the final exams), some shops that are not essential, are allowed to open.
That damn virus must be much more contagious than most infectiuous diseases we have to deal with. And the many light cases when people spread it w/o knowing or having SOON symptoms themselves, do not make it any better.
You can easily take for granted that 40 - 70 % would be infected with little safeguards in place (CDC estimate), if letting it spread. And some more cases mean soon A LOT of cases when the growth is explosive.
That means at least ! 40 % of 4,7 million people (whatever group or region that doctor refered to) = 1,88 million people that are infected. or 3,29 millions if we have an infection rate of 70.
That would happen quickly - so there are consequences.
Many can recover at home, estimate 80 % of known cases, but some of them are very unwell. Think 7 - 10 days until they are feeling well and they have to quarantine at least another 7 days (if not longer) to not be infectious anymore.
btw someone should do the testing on that. Good luck when a major part of the population is home with corona, and / or recovering, and / or quarantining.
Then we have the complicateion rate.
20 % of known cases need to stay in the hospitals, a certain number need the ICU, and after a few days / weeks they can get off. With or without lasting damage.
And some die.
Plus the people that have other serious non-corona issues.
In Italy they did have a lockdown and their doctors had to decide WHO was going to get treatment and whom they were going to let die (at least they prepared for triage). And they had a higher mortality rate because the system was overwhelmed. . (Plus a number of cases of old people dying at home).
All of that is also true for medical staff.
That doctor / "researcher" is a busybody - or a shill for corporate world.
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The U.S. spends 17 % of GDP on healthcare - more than every other nation of earth (and the stress, and hassle the cititzens get for free on top of the high costs). All that spending goes out of the pockets of regular people and lands in few pockets (shareholders - already very rich people how do not increase their spending because they already have more than they can spedn. The money lands on (offshore) accounts and sits there idly).
If the regular citizens get to keep more of that money - single payer IS much, much more cost- efficent, and if the spent money goes to the wages of those who acutally deliver the care, of course the economy will do better. There will be more disposable income.
No more economically DISRUPTIVE bankrupcies over Medical Bills.
Plus the economic advantages when people get the right care in time and things do not get unnecessarily bad (and more costly) because of delayed treatment. Treatment in the E.R. is also very expensive, so when uninsured or underinsured people finally show up in desperation, the ONE time treatment costs too much, regular treatment is not delivered by E.R. and despite the higher costs those patients risk not having a good recovery.
A healthy workforce is essential for a good economy, for stable families (where people are able to take care of each other). Consider the financial and other ! costs if a parent becomes mentally ill (being hit by schizophrenia or depression) and cannot get treatment. It is bad enough, when there is treatment provided, but when untreated expect even more harm - especially to the children of that unfortunate family.
The average for WEALTHY countries is around 8 - 9 % of GDP - see World Bank, healthcare expenditures of nations, 2014. Scroll down, I think they do not only have the per capita expenditures (the U.S. 9,200 vs. the average wealthy European country or Canada 5,000 - 5,500 USD), if I remember correctly they also have the GDP percentages there.
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Financial regulation, Green New Deal, and ending the regime change wars is important (and will have powerful enemies as well). But the most TANGIBLE MESS for all voters is HEALTHCARE (then comes debt incl. student loan debt). Healthcare affects right wingers as well, and it is also pretty complicated (to sort the mess out). A president that solves that problem and proves he or she is a fighter on behalf of the people could also ask the masses for support for other projects.
FDR did it like that. He had to strongarm politicians within the party. First he sorted out the banking system. 5 days banking holiday to find out which banks could survive and which not - and national bank run was looming at that time, no idea why the outgoing admin did nothing. They had legislation ready (1933 was the last time the president was sworn in beginning of March, so almost 4 months to develop it since the election).
Democrats had Congress and Senate and passed legislation quickly, on Sunday night he explained deposit insurace to the nation on the radio. 60 millions of a population of 90 million listened.
That worked out well, trust was restored. In the next weeks the population brought the savings back to the banks.
Then he started to push for relief measures and got resistance from WITHIN. Democrats had majorities in both houses and I think by a wide margin). But like today most elected representatives were at least affluent - then it was even more unusual that a person with a poor background would get an eductation / make a political career. Many could easily resign themselves to the misery of the masses. The unwashed masses would have to suck it up, and they and their circles were doing fine after all.
FDR had to strongarm some, the narrative is that he threatened that he would campaign against some so they would lose their seat if they did not go along. They fell in line, the first measures were TANGIBLE improvements in the life of people - which gave FDR even more leverage.
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the solution: a single payer system will stop to prop up the profits of big pharma and the private insurers. Then Medicare will be better funded and tehy will not have to ask the patients for those high premiums !
the U.S. spends 10,240 USD for every child / adult in the country (even if healthy or w/o insurance, it is an average of all that is spent no matter who pays for it divided by ALL the people).
And I heard that 60 % of all spending already comes from the government (that was a former medicare CEO). In other words approx 6,600 USD per person in subsidies (Medicare is also getting a lot of subsidies it is not only the wage deductions and what the insured have to pay extra).
In other wealthy countries the TOTAL average spending per person is in the range of 4,700 to 4,900 USD (Japan, BelgiumFrance, Canada, Australia) up to expensive Germany with 5,700.
The average is 5,250. And then there is the UK with only 4,250 per person - only 41 % of U.S. spending.
next time you hear that Canada has wait times or the NHS of the UK has inferior service (that can happen they are stretched to the limit, after 10 years of defunding). - the solution for that would be let them have HALF of the U.S. spending
In other words: these nations ALSO must generously subsidize healthcare, so that the individual wage or pension related deductions are very affordable, and almost no co-pays - - but their total spending per person is not as high as the U.S. SUBSIDIES per person.
The government pays LESS and the individuals and companies pay MUCH LESS in mandated income related contributions. Well, you would expect that when a service costs double of what it should cost. Plenty of lard.
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"Giving choice" to opt out = public option may seem like a little tweak - if you haven't done your homework and / or have fallen for the arguments of the lobbyists. No other wealthy country has the public option, there is a good reason why they all mandate to pay into the system (a very affordable payroll tax) and outlaw duplicative coverage. Which sets it up to nudge doctors to accept the contract of the insurance agency and for patients to use the same facilities as all patients (and to not retreat in exclusive facilities)
No duplicative insurance coverage: So the only way a doctor refusing to work with Medicare (and their rates) can offers services that would be covered under M4A is to ask for payment out of pocket. The patients cannot come with a private insurance plan - no insurance company CAN offer such coverage.
M4A coverage would be comprehesive, incl. basic dental - so the only field left for private insurance companies would be extras that are not medically necessary: expensive dental, extended psychotherapy, accupuncture, ...
No duplicative coverage almost excludes treatments with high costs (often surgery) - Out of pocket would be for services of specialists liky eye doctors, dentists, OBI-GYNs, ....
So only a small number of doctors 10 - 20 % could afford to refuse the contract of M4A - they NEED the patients. And they cannot get enough patients (outside of wealthy areas) if the patients have to pay out of pocket. Especially not if the public services free at the point of delivery are properly funded - and therefore good.
Even with the appointments / treatments that are not that expensive - it is in general a deterrent for doctors (chasing after the payments, not enough patients). And the agency does not accept half participation. if you have capacity in your practice you MUST accept patients under M4A if you want the contract to have the large volume of patients.
Patients would pay out of pocket on a case to case basis. That is very tangible - they will have a strong incentive to USE the services that all use, after all they are forced to pay for M4A (in form of payroll tax) - so they can as well use the services free at the point of delivery.
Which will be good IF the system has the SINCERE support of all political parties: enough funding, NOT making things intentionally byzantine, and also willing to straighten out flaws.
Modern medicine is expensive anyway and the population is ageing. So the incentive to use resources prudently is strong. The tempation to cut funding is counteracted by having the affluent use the same facilities and not offering them a chance to retreat into the equivalent of gated communities.
Giving the affluent a strong systemic incentive to use the same facilities is excellent political strategy to protect the system from the special interests and from disingenuous politicians. Protection over the decades.
That way no party (pandering to the affluent and business interests) can make hay from underfunding and villifying the public coverage. The mandatory payroll taxes MUST be affordable (usually also for the wealthy, caps are common) so the rest of the funding comes from government (in total single payer countries pay much less per person than in the U.S. aroud 50 %)
So it may be that the very wealthy pay more (in form of other taxes) than they profit (even considering the cost savings of a streamlined system). Well at least they SEE their tax dollars put to good use. The explicit payroll tax for them is not that high (usually there is a cap at a certain wage).
If they own a company: If they are not (yet) profitable they pay only payroll tax per employee to fund healthcare. Staff will have the same good coverage like everybody else - incl. staff from large and very profitable companies.
So the wealthy and upper class people resist the system less when they have to help fund it. Not even very neoliberal or far right parties openly attack the system. The mandate and no opting out is the simple but highly effective mechanism, that has been protecting the system from attacks - all of the population and all political parties have skin in the game.
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But if Sanders wins Iowa with an eclat it will undermine the credibility of the TV shills even more. Some people will remember. Once you realize that it is intentional and that they not only clueless sometimes, that it is propaganda - there is no turning back.
The networks cannot win back the trust of those viewers. It adds up: WMD lies, the wars that were started in 2001 / 2003 - and still not settled. The great Financial Crisis.
corporate media had for decades a cozy arrangement with BOTH parties that they would never have a factual, reasonable discussion about healthcare in the U.S. or a fact-based informative comparsion with all other countries - and Sanders with help of the internet (media outlets) has changed that.
The level of debate is still abyssmal - but now they cannot control the flow of information. Even the fearmongering does not convince the viewers.
They got Sanders wrong in 2015, 2016 - and they did not see the win of Trump coming.
The citizens at large cannot be bothered to be interested in impeachment. They lost the audience on that.
They had a media blackout on Sanders towards the end of 2019, only in January they could not ignore the polls anymore. So they prepared the viewers that he might do well.
If he kills it in Feb. - while being stuck in D.C. for impeachment - for consumers of mainstream news it must be a surprise.
How come they talked about all other candidates - and now Sanders is a thing in 2020 (again ! after 2016)
No one tells viewers of mainstream media of the unprecedented army of volunteers, (they talk about it, but do not really point out how strong it is). Or about the new strategies. Or how paid staff leverages volunteer capatains who leverage groups of volunteers (with the help of barnstorm events, the BERN app, etc.).
It would have been an interesting story just under the "horse race" aspect. But Corporate media chose to not cover that.
Nor did they tell viewers that candidates with an affluent middle age or older base are likely realistically captured by the polls. But that candidates that activate unlikely voters (young, low income, minorities) will likely outperform the polls.
Since they like to cite polls all the time, wouldn't that be an interesting insight for their viewers ? Iit is hard for pollsters to get it right, if a candidate changes WHO will turn out. The polls for AOC were completely OFF, she increased turnout by 68 % in the primary agains Joe Crowley.
Which was good, I think she was 10 or 15 % behind in the polls 1 week before the primary - and she won comfortably with 9 % margin (something like that). If Crowley had realized how much he was in trouble, he would have activated the New York Democratic party and union machine against her.
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In reality many of the millions are locked up for relatively harmless non-violent crimes. With a good lawyer many of them would not even be there. - and the voting does not change that the (harmful) people are locked away from society. Plus: they vote for parties and candidates that are legitimate and non-criminal (well, at least in theory).
The Boston bomber in 2016 could have voted for Clinton, Trump, Stein or Johnson for instance.
Big deal ! 250 million people have the vote, 139 millions used it - the few really vile criminals will not make a dent.
But of course at the local level the prisoners might be able to get better conditions. There are whole communities that make a living of the incarcerated.
I remember seeing a video where a prison in Texas was overheating. The prisoners were crying for help. were they all "vile" criminals. Were some locked up for minor violations (and a less unequal, violent, vindicative, selfrighteous society would not have locked them up in the first place ?)
prisoners are dehumanized. Then they can be abused for cheap labor and are at the mercy of the officers.
I think it was Reagan that made closed institutions for mentally ill people (JFK considered to do something for that segment, but never came around to it).
If you are mentally ill and sometime erratic and poor and/or w/o loving family it is VERY easy to land yourself in prison.
The poor ! mentally ill in the U.S. are indeed KEPT in the prisons - in other societies there are offers like homes, hospitals, supervised open living, etc.
There was the mentally ill man that annoyed the wards. a usual punishment for "not cooperating" was to expose prisoners to hot showers. They did that for 1 hour, did not check on him inside, and let him yell for help. Although he cried for mercy and promised he would be "good".
That man probably was not able to control his temper (let's assume he even did give the wards trouble). In any just society he might not have been in prison to begin with.
The temperature was so hot that he died, his skin was blistered. they boilded him alive - literally tortured him to death.
Needless to say no one was prosecuted for that.
Maybe if the prisoneres could vote in a mayor or city council that made sure some basic human decency was observed, there would not be cruel and unusual punishment.
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I would advise progressives to reference FDR style economic policies - that might be more relateable to white blue collars. FDR was a decisive leader and not afraid to go into unchartered territory regarding economics.
Mainstream economics * had gotten the country into a complete mess and did not help with recovery after 1929 either - so FDR had the intellectual fortitude to DARE to listen to new economic concepts and to try out new things.
* laissez faire capitalism, deregulation, suppression of wages. Productivitiy (industrial production, more automation) rose after WW1, but the ruling class then had once more succeded in crushing the unions. So the ever increasing industrial output did not meet more disposable income of the consumers = wages.
This was one of the incentives for the haves to throw money at speculation. Investing in production did not bring profits - the masses did not have the increasing wages to keep up with increasing output. And consumer debt (which helped the U.S. to "cope" with the same problem after the 1970s) had not yet been invented.
There were no productive ways to invest all the money (which landed on the accounts of the rich mostly) - only unproductive and unsustainable ones = speculation. Until the bubble burst in 1929.
FDR's motto
"Let's implement programs quickly, if they do not work out as intended we can always tweak them or give them up, but let's DO something."
And of course all these programs were reversible - not like going to war. so it was a strategy of "Implement, monitor, report, improve or discard. Rinse and repeat."
he was not ideological about it.
Willing to listen to people that contradicted the economic generic "wisdom" - like austerity.
FDR might have had a racist streak, or he sold out in that respect to keep the support of the Democrats of the South - not sure about that. On the other hand he could win the loyalty of a woman like Eleanor ... so ...
FDR listened to John Meynard Keynes and also strong left U.S.. movements (unions, socialist parties) that were at large in the U.S. then.
The smart ones among the oligarchs and the rich knew that FDR was the moderate left solution. It would be him - or the pitchforks and/or the far left. (The Russian revolution was in 1917).
After 1929, especially in 1932 the unions and left leaning movements had made a spectacular comeback. (There were the Socialist Farmers of Kansas to give you an idea).
The minimum wage was legally challenged (Supreme Court). Well FDR had ideas (threats) of "packing" the Supreme Court. I think it was the idea to have more judges - and of course HE would appoint them. And he likely had the majorities to get them confirmed.
Of course furious Republican rich industrial leaders and Bankers (the top of the top) did not like THEIR higher taxes and the minimum wages - so they were restricted in exploiting people looking desperately for work.
There were new and strict regulations on finance.
They looked with envy to Europe - many countries there were going the fascist and rightwing route in the 1930s. They tried to have a coup in 1934 to install a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. as weell - maybe with FDR as figurehead (didn't go anywhere, they asked the wrong man, General Smedley Butler).
The most incredible thing about FDR - he not only made campaign promises - he actually (and cleverly) FOUGHT to have them implemented. And did NOT sell out to the Banksters and did not mind their hostility - "I welcome their hatred."
(I am looking at your Barack Obama ! - had a mandated like FDR sold out to Wallstreet on the campaign trail in 2008, talked a good game. And then it was an exercise of protecting the Big Donors)
After 1933 FDR's fight for policies for the relief of the masses included twisting the arms of some Democratic "representatives" so they would vote for his unheard of proposals.
He started the presidency with a looming general bank run - they shut down all banks for 5 days. In a population of then 90 millions, 60 million people listened on late Sunday evening to his first fireside chat as president.
This was a a radio format he used from time to time to inform the country - thus circumventing the gatekeepers of the press - in Republican hands, and the radio stations - also more Republican leaning.
The banks would be opened next morning, deposit insurance had been passed as a law. They had sorted out the banks - respectively created an environment where struggling banks could improve their situation - and if that did not work out - the saving accounts would be guaranteed.
That banking holiday and reset restored public trust in the system and the banks got MORE savings in the upcoming months.
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