The 2016 US General Election

[Parihaka]

All this talk of liberalism reminded me of a piece I meant to post at the time but forgot. Here's an excerpt, all of it still quite apropos really

For the flint-eyed ideologues on the right, none of that matters. Cruz is a true conservative and Trump a liberal in disguise. In truth, Trump’s policies are not a little flexible, to use his word. So too is conservatism, however, and the conservative champions of today might do well to remember how closely their policies resemble those of yesterday’s liberals. I am thinking here not of the McGovern liberals but of an earlier generation of Democrats, the party to which Ronald Reagan said he belonged before it left him. This was the party of the Americans for Democratic Action, of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and of Lionel Trilling. They were strongly anti-communist and fought hard to expel the Marxists from their party. Of economics they were ignorant as swans, but then so too were the Republicans of the day. During the Eisenhower administration the highest marginal income tax rate was 91 percent, and it took Democrat John F. Kennedy to recognize that “a rising tide lifts all boats” and propose a tax reform that brought marginal rates down. Before Arthur Laffer, it was JFK who said that “it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

My good friend Bob Tyrrell wrote a great book called The Death of Liberalism. He was half right. Liberalism did die, but only in the Democratic Party. There it became progressivism, the bastard child of the New Left and identity politics, the perversion of liberalism’s every noble instinct. But liberalism itself did not die. Instead, it was incorporated into the Republican Party, through leaders such as Reagan, and now is almost mainstream conservatism. Like Reagan, today’s conservatives are yesterday’s liberals. What they are not are yesterday’s conservatives.

In Kennedy’s day, Republicans worried more about budget deficits than economic growth and therefore opposed his tax cuts. When the legislation came up for a final vote in the House of Representatives, only 48 Republicans supported it and 126 voted against it, and it passed only because 223 liberal Democrats voted for it. Remember, we are talking about a top marginal rate of 91 percent, which the bill reduced to a still very high 65 percent.

In the 1960s, conservative Southern Democrats aligned themselves with Republicans in voting against Kennedy’s tax cuts and also opposed civil-rights legislation aimed at ending racial segregation. So too did many conservative thinkers of the time, including William F. Buckley. But for the support of liberal Republicans in the House and Senate, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not have passed, and we can thank Ripon Society types in the Republican Party for this. They were right, the conservatives were wrong, and only the strictest of today’s “constitutional conservatives” such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz would question the law. No one would dissent from Martin Luther King’s vision of racially neutral laws, except today’s progressives with their race and gender triumphalism.

Kennedy’s Democratic Party was the natural home for ethnic voters, who felt uncomfortable in a white-shoe Republican Party. Ronald Reagan helped change that, but African-American and white ethnic Republicans will tell you that much of the older party remains. Of the recent success of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and John Kasich, Republicans have much to be proud. And Trump, while he is not the poster child of inclusiveness when it comes to immigrants, has nonetheless revived the old Reagan coalition by bringing formerly Democratic voters to the voting booths to support him. They have left a Democratic Party whose leaders think them ignorant rednecks who cling to their guns and religion, and they’re not made to feel especially welcome when Cruz supporters call them invertebrates and bigots: that’s a good way to win an election, said no one ever.

If Donald Trump is something of a liberal, then perhaps that’s not so bad. Indeed, it’s his departures from liberalism that are more troubling.

[DOR]

bonehead,

Anything less than anyone walking willy nilly in a voting booth is "voter suppression" according to liberals.

Where do you come up with this stuff? If you spent any time at all trying to understand liberals concerns with voting rights, you’d realize that it all about breaking down the barriers to LEGITIMATE citizens having an easy time registering, getting a ballot, casting that ballot and having it counted.

For the record, no one has ever advocated “anyone walking willy nilly in[to] a voting booth.”

[_UXcva]

Except that most of the first world has a perfectly functioning single payer systems that do quite well. I don't understand why the US considers itself so different from other countries that some hybrid of what already works well in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would fail so miserably there. All nations have immigration issues, incompetent governments, a large welfare base etc yet they seem to make it work. There are no death panels, no year long waiting lists for unelective surgery, no financial ruin. It just fucking works.

I read article after article about Americans literally dying because they cant afford treatment for complex diseases due to medical insurance fucking them over and there have not been riots on the streets.

My auntie fought cancer for 10 years before finally succumbing. She didn't have a penny to her name. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical and medicinal expenses were racked up and apart from a very small amount the government funded every last penny till she dropped. If you can't offer that to your populace then you have no place calling yourself a first world country.

That sums it up quite nicely chakos and I’m very sorry to hear about your Auntie.

The situation from my perspective in the US as a middle-class (barely) citizen, ex-military (USCG), service industry person is that health care resources/costs are unaffordable for most of my crew on the excursion boats I work upon. The majority if not all will report to work regardless if they’re sick and most/all have no insurance due to cost or lack of company plan at this time. This is not a reflection on *ACA or Trumps future plans just a observation.

*I think ACA was a step in the right direction, needs tweaking though

[GVChamp]

Except that most of the first world has a perfectly functioning single payer systems that do quite well. I don't understand why the US considers itself so different from other countries that some hybrid of what already works well in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would fail so miserably there. All nations have immigration issues, incompetent governments, a large welfare base etc yet they seem to make it work. There are no death panels, no year long waiting lists for unelective surgery, no financial ruin. It just fucking works.

I read article after article about Americans literally dying because they cant afford treatment for complex diseases due to medical insurance fucking them over and there have not been riots on the streets.

My auntie fought cancer for 10 years before finally succumbing. She didn't have a penny to her name. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical and medicinal expenses were racked up and apart from a very small amount the government funded every last penny till she dropped. If you can't offer that to your populace then you have no place calling yourself a first world country.

This isn't a policy statement. This is rhetoric. Your policy is "government should pay for everything." Great, I disagree, let's move on.
Here's your policy statement:

It just fucking works.

Uh-huh. And my car "just works" too. Let's nationalize the auto companies because cars "just work."

It's called Medicare which I have been intimately involved and familiar with for 34 years.

My neighbor is on Medicare and has been since basically its inception. It doesn't exactly cover all treatments at zero cost. He has supplemental retiree health insurance, as he was a public school teacher, which reduces his out-of-pocket expenses for his fibermyolgia(I think?) treatement to about $20 a month.
His friend, who ONLY has Medicare and no supplemental coverage, has to pay something like $2k out of pocket every month. No retiree health insurance program.

Medicare is not a free lunch. It's not even a single program. There's Part A, Part B, Advantage, and Part D. Then we all have to hear about how government isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, which is besides the point because Caremark, ESI, and UHC all have more beneficiaries than most European nations.

The US system has also evolved a lot of cost controls over the last 2 decades, which the American public initially resisted but is gradually growing to accept. This isn't a static discussion. Claiming superiority of single payer systems today is like claiming superiority of the Soviet economy in the 60s. Look at how much steel they make! Look at all those railroads and potatoes! Look at Sputnik!

I should also add that several states looked at single-payer options and rejected them, as they were outrageously expensive. Single-payer is not a magic wand that just makes things better.

[tbm3fan]

This isn't a policy statement. This is rhetoric. Your policy is "government should pay for everything." Great, I disagree, let's move on.
Here's your policy statement:

Uh-huh. And my car "just works" too. Let's nationalize the auto companies because cars "just work."


My neighbor is on Medicare and has been since basically its inception. It doesn't exactly cover all treatments at zero cost. He has supplemental retiree health insurance, as he was a public school teacher, which reduces his out-of-pocket expenses for his fibermyolgia(I think?) treatement to about $20 a month.
His friend, who ONLY has Medicare and no supplemental coverage, has to pay something like $2k out of pocket every month. No retiree health insurance program.

Medicare is not a free lunch. It's not even a single program. There's Part A, Part B, Advantage, and Part D. Then we all have to hear about how government isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, which is besides the point because Caremark, ESI, and UHC all have more beneficiaries than most European nations.

The US system has also evolved a lot of cost controls over the last 2 decades, which the American public initially resisted but is gradually growing to accept. This isn't a static discussion. Claiming superiority of single payer systems today is like claiming superiority of the Soviet economy in the 60s. Look at how much steel they make! Look at all those railroads and potatoes! Look at Sputnik!

I should also add that several states looked at single-payer options and rejected them, as they were outrageously expensive. Single-payer is not a magic wand that just makes things better.

You're talking to the choir about Medicare. Between my biller and me we are both well versed in Medicare.

I will say you are very confusing. There is a group that wants to do away with Medicare. There are those that want to do away with Affordable Care and have everybody buy on the open market if they can. Then we have those who want free insurance or that which is paid for by their work. Sounds like you want no costs. No copays, no deductibles, and no maximum for the year or life of the policy. What exactly wrong is there with a $20 copay? What is wrong with the policy covering 80% which Medicare and many others do? You can get a supplemental if you want. You're right there is no free lunch.

Someone pays 2K per month out of pocket. Get the real numbers then so I can see where. Medicare takes about $98 out of your Social Security check every month. So you are saying this person is undergoing 20K of medical care each month making it 24K out of pocket for the year? Sorry, his friend doesn't know what he is doing. My biller just cut a patients premium for health insurance from $800 to $400 through his school district as a retiree. He didn't know how to do things either. You don't know enough to say pro or con about Medicare and I'm not about to go into a long crash course on it.

[GVChamp]

You're talking to the choir about Medicare. Between my biller and me we are both well versed in Medicare.

I will say you are very confusing. There is a group that wants to do away with Medicare. There are those that want to do away with Affordable Care and have everybody buy on the open market if they can. Then we have those who want free insurance or that which is paid for by their work. Sounds like you want no costs. No copays, no deductibles, and no maximum for the year or life of the policy. What exactly wrong is there with a $20 copay? What is wrong with the policy covering 80% which Medicare and many others do? You can get a supplemental if you want. You're right there is no free lunch.

Someone pays 2K per month out of pocket. Get the real numbers then so I can see where. Medicare takes about $98 out of your Social Security check every month. So you are saying this person is undergoing 20K of medical care each month making it 24K out of pocket for the year? Sorry, his friend doesn't know what he is doing. My biller just cut a patients premium for health insurance from $800 to $400 through his school district as a retiree. He didn't know how to do things either. You don't know enough to say pro or con about Medicare and I'm not about to go into a long crash course on it.

The point is that Medicare isn't a free-access-for-all program and there are all sorts of costs and access issues. Moving to single payer doesn't resolve healthcare disputes, it just moves all of them to Washington to be resolved in favor of the most politically connected groups.

As for what's wrong with paying a co-pay? It's sexist to demand women to pay anything for their own birth control, for starters. What's wrong with prior authorizations? Doctors don't like them and "if my doctor says I should get it then I should get it (for free)." What's wrong with evidence-based medicine? Because I feel better when I take THESE pills and have THESE procedures at 10x the cost despite no clinical evidence. What's wrong with only limiting breast cancer screenings to high-risk groups in the 30s and 40s age groups? How DARE you hate women, you sexist?!


This is leaving aside the free-lunch economics Progressives invent: there's no cost-shifting in healthcare. There's also no evidence that EVERY preventative treatment saves money (most usually cost more).

There's not even evidence that access to Medicaid actually improves health outcomes. The only RCT ever done had more evidence that Medicaid access increases cigarette purchases (thus decreasing health) than actually improving healthcare result.

[JAD_333]

All this talk of liberalism reminded me of a piece I meant to post at the time but forgot. Here's an excerpt, all of it still quite apropos really

Classic ebb and flow.

To quote from the Buckley article you posted:

"My good friend Bob Tyrrell wrote a great book called The Death of Liberalism. He was half right. Liberalism did die, but only in the Democratic Party. There it became progressivism, the bastard child of the New Left and identity politics, the perversion of liberalism’s every noble instinct. But liberalism itself did not die. Instead, it was incorporated into the Republican Party, through leaders such as Reagan, and now is almost mainstream conservatism. Like Reagan, today’s conservatives are yesterday’s liberals. What they are not are yesterday’s conservatives."

It's inevitable in a two-party system that parts of what have been working for one party will be adopted by the other, as the constant dynamic remains winning elections. To remain on top, a party must defend its successes and chart a course beyond them. This is where things begin to go well or badly for a party. If it outdistances the tolerance of its base, things go badly, which I suggest happened to the dems in this election. Bill Clinton understood this before his 2nd presidential run when he co-opted some of the GOP's positions, particularly in adopting tougher standards for welfare recipients and slashing the deficit. No such move happened this time around. Hillary not only adopted some of Bernie Sanders' "socialistic" positions, but made much of sticking with the Obama legacy.

I tend to harp on this pendulum effect, which I believe is akin to the tides moving in and out but over longer periods of time. It remains to be seen if the pendulum has really swung toward the conservative side, but I agree with the author that the conservative side looks less like the conservatives of the early 1950s and more like the liberals of the 1960s & 70s.

I'm more interested these days in another form of pendulum, namely whether it's time for the Federal government to begin shrinking, with a concurrent increase (or return) in state power. Apart from defense, interstate commerce, and other sectors that clearly require a central government, the case for continuing Federal intervention in education, welfare, and healthcare, just to name a few areas that may best be handled by the states, is now open for scrutiny. Has the Federal government taken too much upon itself since the sea change brought on by the New Deal in the 1930s?

[chakos]

This isn't a policy statement. This is rhetoric. Your policy is "government should pay for everything." Great, I disagree, let's move on.
Here's your policy statement:

Uh-huh. And my car "just works" too. Let's nationalize the auto companies because cars "just work."

I wasn't making a policy statement I was asking a question albeit in a frustrated manner.

And yes if nationalizing the auto companies presented better proven outcomes than private ownership in every first world country it had been tried then I would definitely recommend it.

[Doktor]

I wasn't making a policy statement I was asking a question albeit in a frustrated manner.

And yes if nationalizing the auto companies presented better proven outcomes than private ownership in every first world country it had been tried then I would definitely recommend it.

Good luck with that. Governments should not run companies. Full stop.

[chakos]

Good luck with that. Governments should not run companies. Full stop.

There was a bit of sarcasm there. I don't expect governments to run auto companies better than private enterprise so the point is mute. It has been shown however, over and over again that government managed health care gives better outcomes as long as the country has a reasonable tax base.

[GVChamp]

There was a bit of sarcasm there. I don't expect governments to run auto companies better than private enterprise so the point is mute. It has been shown however, over and over again that government managed health care gives better outcomes as long as the country has a reasonable tax base.

No it really hasn't. The US government manages a lot of healthcare in the US and it is extremely shitty and extremely costly. None of you ever developed large scale private markets but most of you have private payment sytems that the vast majority of you participate in. Most of you also live in nations where healthcare is privately provisioned, just not paid for, unless you are British.

This is leaving aside that health outcomes are improving everywhere and are probably independent of the specific provisions of the health financing system.

Regardless, get back to me in 20 years. The US system has a lot of funding and can adapt plenty of the cost saving measures other nations have already put into place, and single payer is not necessary to implement them.

Here's some advanced premium Canadian healthcare: some physicians get around this by charging annual fees for services which include non-essential health options, or items which are not covered by the public plan, such as doctors notes, prescription refills over the phone.[4



Meanwhile, CVS and Walgreens have all their pharmacies connected by satellite and pioneered electronic adjudicaton of claims. Unless you want to bill to Medicare, in which case have fun printing paper forms.

[tbm3fan]

The point is that Medicare isn't a free-access-for-all program and there are all sorts of costs and access issues. Moving to single payer doesn't resolve healthcare disputes, it just moves all of them to Washington to be resolved in favor of the most politically connected groups.

As for what's wrong with paying a co-pay? It's sexist to demand women to pay anything for their own birth control, for starters. What's wrong with prior authorizations? Doctors don't like them and "if my doctor says I should get it then I should get it (for free)." What's wrong with evidence-based medicine? Because I feel better when I take THESE pills and have THESE procedures at 10x the cost despite no clinical evidence. What's wrong with only limiting breast cancer screenings to high-risk groups in the 30s and 40s age groups? How DARE you hate women, you sexist?!


This is leaving aside the free-lunch economics Progressives invent: there's no cost-shifting in healthcare. There's also no evidence that EVERY preventative treatment saves money (most usually cost more).

There's not even evidence that access to Medicaid actually improves health outcomes. The only RCT ever done had more evidence that Medicaid access increases cigarette purchases (thus decreasing health) than actually improving healthcare result.

This is why I don't debate with so called experts on the outside. Direct experience and direct knowledge within the system doesn't matter so I bow out for good.

[JAD_333]

The US government manages a lot of healthcare in the US and it is extremely shitty and extremely costly.

On what do you base this claim? I'm in the VA system--about 10 years now. While it's not perfect, it has given me as good and sometimes better care than what I used to receive in the private sector. Medicare did right by my mother. Aside from those examples, I can't speak to other USG health care programs. They may be "extremely expensive" but to say they are "extremely shitty" seems unwarranted.

[chakos]

No it really hasn't. The US government manages a lot of healthcare in the US and it is extremely shitty and extremely costly. None of you ever developed large scale private markets but most of you have private payment sytems that the vast majority of you participate in. Most of you also live in nations where healthcare is privately provisioned, just not paid for, unless you are British.

This is leaving aside that health outcomes are improving everywhere and are probably independent of the specific provisions of the health financing system.

Regardless, get back to me in 20 years. The US system has a lot of funding and can adapt plenty of the cost saving measures other nations have already put into place, and single payer is not necessary to implement them.

Here's some advanced premium Canadian healthcare: some physicians get around this by charging annual fees for services which include non-essential health options, or items which are not covered by the public plan, such as doctors notes, prescription refills over the phone.[4



Meanwhile, CVS and Walgreens have all their pharmacies connected by satellite and pioneered electronic adjudicaton of claims. Unless you want to bill to Medicare, in which case have fun printing paper forms.

I have a better understanding of the Australian system far more than the Canadian or the British one. Here we have medicare and it covers medical care for all citizens apart from dental (thats only covered for the poor). You go to the doctor, he/she bills medicare and the doctor gets paid what the schedule considers appropriate. Some doctors (usually in wealthier areas) ask for a small co payment but if you want to get free medical its not difficult to find. Public hospitals are available for all at no cost. If you choose to have medical insurance it tends to cover things like elective surgery in private hospitals, better dental and all the extras.
Drugs are basically single payer, if a drug is on the pharmaceutical benefits list (most are apart from things like viagra and other recreational type drugs) then they are heavily subsidized and you only ever pay up to $30 a month, if you are a pensioner or poor you pay no more than $3.30 per perscription.

Yet for all these benefits we spend significantly less (both personally and as a nation) on health care per capita than the US. You still can't see that there is a better way.

[bonehead]

bonehead,




Where do you come up with this stuff? If you spent any time at all trying to understand liberals concerns with voting rights, you’d realize that it all about breaking down the barriers to LEGITIMATE citizens having an easy time registering, getting a ballot, casting that ballot and having it counted.

For the record, no one has ever advocated “anyone walking willy nilly in[to] a voting booth.”

You are kidding right? Didn't I just mention what happened in illinois?. When people were not automatically registered because they have a drivers license, it was called "voter suppression" plain as day. I even gave you a link where in California it is against the law to ask for an I.D. of someone going to the booth. The facts are that if someone in the country wants to vote all they have to do is go through the hoops that everyone else did. Registering to vote was actually one of the easiest things I have done in my adult life and it took all of 5 minutes. The only barrier peope really have is that they think the government should do all the registering for them. In reality all they have to do is get off their ass and register. It is simple. It is easy. All you have to do is fill out a short form and have some sort of approved ID handy. If you cant do that or wont do that then you have far more important issues to deal with than voting.