SSOTT

[dmk08]

Originally Posted by minn19

Well said, Biden is a major piece of shit as well, just a more competent one, which is something I guess. But, if he wins it’ll be four more years of weird ass shit coming out of the WH, just different weird from Biden (if he wins).

I agree as well, I’m tired of the “what is better for Wall Street” crap. Them assholes nearly destroyed the worlds financial system a little over ten years ago and are poised to do it for real this time with Trump at the helm.

The Dems had a real chance to get some fresh blood/fresh ideas and here we are stuck with a choice of two old as hell, weird white boomers again.

Actually Biden and Bernie are both The Silent Generation not Boomers.

Speaking as a someone whose father is from that generation they are anything but silent.

[GrussGott]

Uhhhh ... it's going to be bad people ...

[Arcades]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

Uhhhh ... it's going to be bad people ...

I read something like this similar on Twitter.

The entire jist of what's going on is, because of what Trump did to the CDC, CDC is now currently COMPLETELY and utterly ill equipped to combat what's going on. Not only is the CDC not ready for this, they don't have anything setup to protect the doctors or nurses that are supposed to be on the front lines. Doctors have no clue what to do so they ask the CDC. CDC basically says, we have no idea either, sorry.

The only reason currently why this hasn't been spreading as bad as it has been (that could change of course) is due to the States themselves blocking travel or focusing on people coming from out of State. However, if COVID-19 starts spreading hard in the States, the government (due to Trump's absolute stupidity) we, as citizens, are essentially out of luck.

I have an extreme interest in anything health care lately due to my own personal life and someone close to me. I have personally seen how evil the health insurance industry is as a whole. Nothing but cannibals.



A year back, while traveling to Taipei, I got ill on the plane ride there and started throwing up, a lot. I couldn't keep anything down, even water. The head flight attendant told my mother that she is afraid i might have food poisoning so. I would be the first off the plane but sadly they don't have much to help me other then telling me to hang on for 3 more hours. I made it of course but felt like absolute crap.

All airports have an emergency small hospital, same is true for Taipei's Taoyuan International. Sadly for me though we took an extremely late flight and got to Taipei at 4:45 AM in the morning, so nothing was open.

Did feel better getting off the plane but i couldn't keep anything down. My uncle picked us up and decided to check in to our hotel first and let me rest. I don't sleep at all on planes so... I was, at that point, been up for a little over 24 hours and I was exhausted too.

Early morning, my mother woke me up after i finally slept well and my uncle took us (my parents and I) to a local, private hospital that was owned by a friend of my father's Elder brother. I got there with my parents and they explained as much as they could but said I didn't have health insurance. My parents did but I was too young when we left Taiwan for the States so I never got it.

Filling out a bit of forms, and personally visited by the owner of the hospital, whom knew my father, he told us that he has told the doctor what's going on and will be seeing me soon. I saw him, asked me some questions in Mandarin that I replied in said Mandarin before telling me they need to do some test and stuff to check what's happening.

I was taken to do a full body X-Ray, full blood test, checked my blood pressure, pulse, urine test as well as a physical (there was one more test but I cannot recall it at the moment). That took about 1 hour or so for me before I was called back in to see the doctor where he explained I had a lot of gas in my body for some reason. He said my anxiety probably had a lot of reason to do with it. I am not sure how he knew I deal with anxiety a lot, so it was surprising for him to bring it up. But the gas is why I couldn't keep anything down, why I felt like crap. Gave me 3 prescription to help me with my symptoms and told me not to eat anything solid for a few days along with directions for the medicine I was being given.

Here's the kicker. All of this cost about 4600 Taiwan Dollars, which translates to roughly about 150 US. Mind you, I had no health insurance when I did this and I paid straight out of pocket at a legit, private 10+ story hospital. There is... NO fucking way this would ever happen in the US. Nor would it cost me $150 for the amount of work the hospital did for me. It also would take WAY longer than 1 hour and 30 minutes roughly. Last time, I sat in the ER with my parents cuz my mother had a slight break in her hand from falling, we waited there for 3+ hours. They did 1 damn scan that would have cost my mother over 4k if it wasn't for her insurance.


There is nothing you can tell me, how stupid the health system is in the States. And now they are risking their own doctors and workers because they are completely ill prepared even though this has been spreading to other corners of the globe. Whether it is the more aggressive COVID-19 strain or the less aggressive one.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Arcades

There is nothing you can tell me, how stupid the health system is in the States. And now they are risking their own doctors and workers because they are completely ill prepared even though this has been spreading to other corners of the globe. Whether it is the more aggressive COVID-19 strain or the less aggressive one.

Wow, that's quite the ordeal! (I had a similar experience from Japan - gate #39 chicken and rice - except ... I had to make my own diapers from things I bought in the airport and had two layovers )

:: you can probably stop reading here - but just in case you're curious ::

Yeah, the US system is garbage and I"m not trying to defend it, although it's the doctors, hospitals, and drug and supply companies that drive the costs whereas insurance simply tries to control them, but usually in very very bad and wrong ways while also, of course, taking a cut.

The good news is, ACA and Medicare Advantage work completely differently - in those cases (esp MA), the insurance company gets paid by the government via proving the member has conditions via claims & medical records. That means the insurance company is very incented to be pro-active in working with doctors to manage a patient's health, including developing advanced analytics to predict illness. When they accurately document a patient they get paid accordingly, if they don't, they don't. The insurance company is also in a position to be a check on medical costs so docs don't go crazy (and they also sign contracts with docs).

Anyway, bottom line is, the US should go Medicare Advantage for all - this would mean it's a private insurance system / government partnership versus a "single payer".

I'm keeping it simple, but it's why it's so hard to change the system - nobody gets how it actually works or what these terms really mean.

[dmk08]

Originally Posted by Arcades

I read something like this similar on Twitter.

The entire jist of what's going on is, because of what Trump did to the CDC, CDC is now currently COMPLETELY and utterly ill equipped to combat what's going on. Not only is the CDC not ready for this, they don't have anything setup to protect the doctors or nurses that are supposed to be on the front lines. Doctors have no clue what to do so they ask the CDC. CDC basically says, we have no idea either, sorry.

The only reason currently why this hasn't been spreading as bad as it has been (that could change of course) is due to the States themselves blocking travel or focusing on people coming from out of State. However, if COVID-19 starts spreading hard in the States, the government (due to Trump's absolute stupidity) we, as citizens, are essentially out of luck.

I have an extreme interest in anything health care lately due to my own personal life and someone close to me. I have personally seen how evil the health insurance industry is as a whole. Nothing but cannibals.



A year back, while traveling to Taipei, I got ill on the plane ride there and started throwing up, a lot. I couldn't keep anything down, even water. The head flight attendant told my mother that she is afraid i might have food poisoning so. I would be the first off the plane but sadly they don't have much to help me other then telling me to hang on for 3 more hours. I made it of course but felt like absolute crap.

All airports have an emergency small hospital, same is true for Taipei's Taoyuan International. Sadly for me though we took an extremely late flight and got to Taipei at 4:45 AM in the morning, so nothing was open.

Did feel better getting off the plane but i couldn't keep anything down. My uncle picked us up and decided to check in to our hotel first and let me rest. I don't sleep at all on planes so... I was, at that point, been up for a little over 24 hours and I was exhausted too.

Early morning, my mother woke me up after i finally slept well and my uncle took us (my parents and I) to a local, private hospital that was owned by a friend of my father's Elder brother. I got there with my parents and they explained as much as they could but said I didn't have health insurance. My parents did but I was too young when we left Taiwan for the States so I never got it.

Filling out a bit of forms, and personally visited by the owner of the hospital, whom knew my father, he told us that he has told the doctor what's going on and will be seeing me soon. I saw him, asked me some questions in Mandarin that I replied in said Mandarin before telling me they need to do some test and stuff to check what's happening.

I was taken to do a full body X-Ray, full blood test, checked my blood pressure, pulse, urine test as well as a physical (there was one more test but I cannot recall it at the moment). That took about 1 hour or so for me before I was called back in to see the doctor where he explained I had a lot of gas in my body for some reason. He said my anxiety probably had a lot of reason to do with it. I am not sure how he knew I deal with anxiety a lot, so it was surprising for him to bring it up. But the gas is why I couldn't keep anything down, why I felt like crap. Gave me 3 prescription to help me with my symptoms and told me not to eat anything solid for a few days along with directions for the medicine I was being given.

Here's the kicker. All of this cost about 4600 Taiwan Dollars, which translates to roughly about 150 US. Mind you, I had no health insurance when I did this and I paid straight out of pocket at a legit, private 10+ story hospital. There is... NO fucking way this would ever happen in the US. Nor would it cost me $150 for the amount of work the hospital did for me. It also would take WAY longer than 1 hour and 30 minutes roughly. Last time, I sat in the ER with my parents cuz my mother had a slight break in her hand from falling, we waited there for 3+ hours. They did 1 damn scan that would have cost my mother over 4k if it wasn't for her insurance.


There is nothing you can tell me, how stupid the health system is in the States. And now they are risking their own doctors and workers because they are completely ill prepared even though this has been spreading to other corners of the globe. Whether it is the more aggressive COVID-19 strain or the less aggressive one.

TLDR.. if your Dad knows the owner of a private hospital in a country where you dont have insurance they will treat you.

Do you really think this would be the average persons experience?

[minn19]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

So this happened today. For reals. Not the onion. this is real.

One of many "let them eat cake" moments.

Which was misconstrued, but still poor choice of words on her part considering the situation in France at the time.

[Arcades]

Originally Posted by dmk08

TLDR.. if your Dad knows the owner of a private hospital in a country where you dont have insurance they will treat you.

Do you really think this would be the average persons experience?

Yes.

Because visiting hospitals don't cost you an arm and a leg in Taiwan. It never had.

What I paid is what others would. If I did have health insurance there, I would have paid less.

[minn19]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

I'm FAR less pessimistic than you guys - I'm basing that on Biden's team and his remarks about Pete, Amy, and Beto: unless he's lying, he's clearly planning on building an administration with the next generation of democrats:

"I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, because I promise you, you’re gonna end up over your lifetime seeing a hell of a lot more of Pete than you are of me."
"Democrats need a candidate who can assemble the largest, most diverse coalition possible"

And the Biden campaign started selling this t-shirt:
In short, Biden's actions tell me he's thinking of this election as more of a caretaker role, bringing in a team of young democrats to do the leading - if he wins, I wouldn't be surprised to see him not run for a second term if there's a path for his Veep or other ...

Further, Biden's politics have significantly evolved and, despite that fact people keep calling him a moderate, none of his campaign policy positions are moderate (for better or worse):

EXAMPLE #1: Health Care
This is complicated because most people don't understand how health insurance and Medicare work ... the TLDR is Biden wants a huge expansion of the ACA which is more/less a universal coverage public option.

The slightly longer answer is:

* Today Medicare Parts A, B, D (doc visits, hospital stays, drugs) kinda suck: limited coverage, coverage time limits (e.g., 6 weeks then you're booted), no vision, dental or annual exam, etc. To cover those gaps, you can buy various "medicare supplemental" insurance plans (and/or state medicaid plans can help like they did my grandma in MN)

* Or - you can go Medicare Part C, aka "Medicare Advantage" which is *private insurance*. Essentially the Feds "sell" your medical risk to a private insurance company, paying the private insurance company what they would guess you'd cost to cover every year. To figure out this gov't-to-private payment, the government bases it on how healthy/ill the member is and "risk adjusts" the payment to the private insurer (healthier=$, sicker=$$$). Part C, btw, is exploding in popularity covering about 30M people ...

So who gives a fuck?
Well the ACA right now is risk adjusted too (different formula because people are younger).

What's that mean?
That ACA healthcare coverage is a government/private partnership exactly like Medicare part C!

Why's that matter?
Because Bernie's "Medicare for All" is NOT a partnership, it's much more like Medicare parts A & B (which Bernie wisely doesn't use!!) with unlimited coverage which makes it so expensive that 43 cents of every dollar in the US economy would flow through the US government which is more than at the height of WW2! In short, it's virtually impossible. More importantly, Bernie is completely inflexible on it - Even AOC has said she'd support a public-option compromise, but Bernie said M4A is already the compromise.

Joe Biden's plan, while still raising taxes, would simply be an expansion of the existing Medicaid, ACA, Medicare Part C infrastructure already in place - in short extremely doable and even desirable by the existing healthcare stakeholders.

EXAMPLE #2: Fiscal Policy
Biden tax policy is to both increase taxes and shift the burden of the increase to upper incomes:


Anyway, my point is, all of the evidence indicates Joe Biden is building a team of next-gen superstars to push *THEIR* progressive policy agenda - which is far from past moderate Joe.

While I may not like some of those policies, any of them are better for my economic future (and life) than Trump as I believe he's destroying the US's economic future, exchanging short-term emotional wins at the huge price of long-term expansion.

This is all based on if the Dems take the Senate and increase their majority in the House I assume. Otherwise, I don't see a lot of this happening without that scenario. Even then a lot of this will be hard to pass.

Trump's handling of the Coronavirus and some of his biggest cheerleaders continued antics (Gaetz gas mask) is helping make that a possibility, but as you know it isn't a forgone conclusion.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by minn19

This is all based on if the Dems take the Senate and increase their majority in the House I assume. Otherwise, I don't see a lot of this happening without that scenario. Even then a lot of this will be hard to pass.

Trump's handling of the Coronavirus and some of his biggest cheerleaders continued antics (Gaetz gas mask) is helping make that a possibility, but as you know it isn't a forgone conclusion.

I wasn't trying to say what would happen if elected, only show that Biden is no longer a moderate and that he's likely to assemble a team of young dems to run the show (versus him cause he's old).

With that said, I think a Biden election is our last chance at normal - if he/his team fails to deliver things like healthcare and tax reform then I think our country is going to devolve into a conspiracy riddled cold civil war scenario (unless that is only an artifact of baby boomers and genX - but I don't think so).

The right-wing media alternative universe insanity and the left-wing Bernie Bro revolutionaries will destroy the country.

[GrussGott]

viola:

and this is when these people are in power - think of what unlimited power or out of power would be like to democracy

The most bizarre thing is, my grandfather told me these stories of the Japanese and the fascists and it seemed completely unbelievable that adult humans would ask this way, but here we are in Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros.

And now you see someone like Lindsey Graham who, for whatever reason, has gone all in on Trump - if the winds blow differently, how does he back out? He can't, so he needs to do everything he can to keep Trump in office perpetuating the evil

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”
-- United States Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, Feb 21st, 2020

So now it's up to us to stop fascism ... in our country, that stopped fascism in other countries 80 years ago ...

[GrussGott]

I guess the good news is, corporate America is stepping up to fill the void Trump is leaving, but if true, this is frightening:

Trump is treating this as a political problem, not a public health crisis - prepare to lobby your governors if you aren't already

[minn19]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

I guess the good news is, corporate America is stepping up to fill the void Trump is leaving, but if true, this is frightening:

Trump is treating this as a political problem, not a public health crisis - prepare to lobby your governors if you aren't already

Trump treats everything as a political/personal problem (they are always intertwined) so I guess why should this be any different.

MN just announced our first case, here we go.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by minn19

Trump treats everything as a political/personal problem (they are always intertwined) so I guess why should this be any different.

MN just announced our first case, here we go.

this has to heard to be believed - it's complete management incompetence

BTW - the US is officially the worst in the World at testing (by orders of magnitude) and the reason given is because we don't have an outbreak (note: which we don't know because we're testing at such low rates)

[Captain Blood]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

viola:

and this is when these people are in power - think of what unlimited power or out of power would be like to democracy

The most bizarre thing is, my grandfather told me these stories of the Japanese and the fascists and it seemed completely unbelievable that adult humans would ask this way, but here we are in [COLOR="Blue"]Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros[/COLOR].

And now you see someone like Lindsey Graham who, for whatever reason, has gone all in on Trump - if the winds blow differently, how does he back out? He can't, so he needs to do everything he can to keep Trump in office perpetuating the evil

"As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil."
-- United States Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, Feb 21st, 2020

So now it's up to us to stop fascism ... in our country, that stopped fascism in other countries 80 years ago ...

You'll know the trump fever has broken when Lindsey Graham starts blowing the other way.

A complete political featherweight.

[Captain Blood]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

this has to heard to be believed - it's complete management incompetence

BTW - the US is officially the worst in the World at testing (by orders of magnitude) and the reason given is because we don't have an outbreak (note: which we don't know because we're testing at such low rates)

Did you see this one earlier?
.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Captain Blood

Did you see this one earlier?
.

ha, nice! there's this one which isn't a good w/o trump ... someone needs to combine them!

[GrussGott]

On another note, this is a good summary of COVID-19, but what I think is being missed ... 20% of people are severe or critical!

[Arcades]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

On another note, this is a good summary of COVID-19, but what I think is being missed ... 20% of people are severe or critical!

Isn't the ones infected who passed are almost always elderly or have previous health issues?

And the whole... two COVID-19 strains. I don't think the US doctors at this point even know which one is which when they test.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Arcades

Isn't the ones infected who passed are almost always elderly or have previous health issues?

And the whole... two COVID-19 strains. I don't think the US doctors at this point even know which one is which when they test.

They are most vulnerable, but any adult is susceptible and we don't currently know enough to predict who or why. For example the 34 year old Chinese doc who alerted the public died from it.

On the lighter side of things, this is hilarious:

[GrussGott]

Hmmm ...

[GrussGott]

Annnnddd here's the guidance from the American Hospital Association; upcoming due to COVID19 2020 vs 2019 flu:

96,000,000 vs 35,500,000 infections
4,800,000 vs 490,600 hospitalizations
1,900,000 vs 49,000 ICU admissions
480,000 vs 34,200 deaths

So 10x worse than the flu and especially note the hospitalizations - 5 million!

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by Arcades

Isn't the ones infected who passed are almost always elderly or have previous health issues?

There's starting to look like there may be a correlation with metabolic disease, i.e, people high blood pressure, cholesterol, etc which may be why COVID-19 is killing people who otherwise wouldn't seem like they're vulnerable (e.g, people in their 30s).

For example, if you're too young to have thought about checking your vascular health and suddenly your immune system goes into overdrive you could find lungs filling up with mucus - this could mean smokers and/or people who live with smokers would be at extra risk, etc

course all of this is super preliminary...