I can see how I probably wasn't clear previously on the issue of pushing back. I meant that, in other circumstances if someone were to push back on the use of soldiers or their families as political props in a presidential campaign I would find it very refreshing. I find a lot to agree with in the OP on this issue.
Trump's response did not do what I would like to see happen, nor do I find the demagoguery Trump engages in about American Muslims more generally, to which Clinton's actions were no doubt a response, to be anything other than detestable.
Fair enough and maybe I am missing something in my frustration with militarism I've been stewing on the last 15 years (for awhile I was seriously waiting for loyalty oaths to be required to buy a hot dog at a baseball game).
My more recent frustration that there is even a need to refute the types of claims Trump is making about American Muslims and numerous others may also contribute.
All you're doing is reaffirming mine, and what I interpret the author's point to be, which is that soldiers (the deader the better) in our political culture have become the most useful political props to the big parties. I don't have to like or agree with Trump to recognize that and I find the tactic concerning even when it's employed against politicians I don't like.
Also being in the military in itself or even dying in the line of duty doesn't demonstrate anything about an individual's politics (though by all accounts I've seen Kareem Khan served honorably). Just ask Nidal Hassan.
I don't entirely disagree, but there's a reason the Clinton campaign chose the family of a soldier. Why wasn't it a physician or a teacher or engineer or successful business owner? That would've made the same point about assimilation.
The criticism I'm making here isn't specific to Clinton (the Republicans were shameless about it during the Bush years).
Point number 3 is both important and is maybe being missed in the discussion of Khangate or whatever we're calling it. There was an article in the Atlantic a few years ago that argued that a number of factors have moved most Americans too far away from its military to really understand it, and one of the results has been blind hero worship of anyone involved in the institution and even of the institution itself.
This isn't to say we shouldn't have respect for individuals who have made sacrifces, or that Trump isnt guilty of his usual idiocy and tasteless in response to Khan's speech. However, and maybe this was what @aaron-david was saying above, I do think that Khan was used here as a partisan prop, the same way the military and their families have been for decades, and particularly extensively since 9/11. In other circumstances I'd almost be impressed that a major party presidential nominee was willing to aggressively push back in the face of the tactic. Of course it's Trump so instead of the eloquent criticism I'd love to see its the usual wild eyed egotistical and racially charged bluser
This is pretty close to my view on the subject. Not saying I'd be against any proposed regime of voter ID laws but the unique history of the United States combined with the unreliable and at times tough to access agencies that would administer the rules make them inherently suspect to me.
I've also never seen convincing evidence that we have a voter fraud problem, which again, raises questions to me about the true intentions.
I think this is a fantasy. Significant portions of the population will never be able to pay for routine health maintenance services without being subsidized. Relying on that takes us back to the uninsured problems pre-ACA where people went untreated until the problem was catastrophic and thus much more costly for whoever ended up footing the bill.
I agree that the employer model is outdated but there is a role in my opinion for private insurers and that is cost control. It's what Medicare Part C and Medicaid Managed Care are (very imperfectly) experimenting with. I could see a world where risk adjusted private insurers working with ACOs or similar provider organizations get us to full coverage and save money, which as much as it sucks to say, is important.
Of course we aren't anywhere close to that yet but it's that reason that I'm not sure a switch to fee for service single payor is really what we should be aiming for.
@stillwater I'm talking about the system as a whole. We've got Medicare covering individuals over 65 but it's really split into 3ish systems. Parts A and B are at heart fully socialized systems where claims go directly to the federal government for payment.
Parts C and D are programs administered by private entities. Part C will be your traditional insurers who get money from the federal government through the risk adjustment process and Part D is the prescription drug program. These entities are for profit, private entities but are also heavily regulated and depended on by the government for Medicare to work.
Next you have your for profit plans, traditionally provided by employers, versions of which are now commercially available for individuals via the exchanges. These plans are regulated primarily at the state level. They cover everyone under 65 or who don't qualify for Medicaid.
Lastly you have Medicaid (including CHIP, etc.) for people with sufficiently low income which is funded by the federal government but administered by the states. Like Medicare, some Medicaid benefits are paid by claims straight to the state agency but there are also Medicaid Managed Care plans administered by private insurance companies that look a lot like Medicare Part C.
All of these systems have their own interested parties, their pros and their cons. What we don't have is a fundamental coherence and it can be extremely challenging to understand how they all work together, including the gaps, perverse incentives, and cost hiding that goes on between them. These gaps and perverse incentives was how we ended up with the large number of uninsured (who were putting pressure on emergency providers which operate in regulatory ecosystems of their own) that the ACA was supposed to address. The problem with the ACA is that it looks to correct the problem of the uninsured which is really just a symptom of the fact that we've got all of these overlapping payors (public and private) with their own incentives and prerogatives, and subject to a variety of different regulations at every level of government. The uninsured were people who fell through the cracks under the old system but by insuring them we've created other unintended consequences.
My point is just that no one would create a system like this from scratch. However it's hard to fix at the margins because of the overlap and different levels of government involved and of course scrapping it and starting over probably isn't possible politically. Also for clarity my point isn't that we don't need regulation just that we need a system that covers everyone and isn't in perpetual conflict with itself.
The better question is why do we deliver healthcare through this insurance structure. Even if it was fully public it would probably still be an insurance type system where people are paying into it and someone is determining what's covered and what isn't. That's how single payor (and old school Medicare parts A and B) work, it's just financed through taxes of current or future beneficiaries, as applicable.
The fundamental flaw isn't so much that aspect of it, it's that in this country we've built an incoherent hybrid public-private system with its own entrenched interests and fiefdoms. Our system of government makes comprehensive reform (which I agree is what we would do in a perfect world) really hard to get to.
The problem with this theory is it assumes that the big private insurers have gotten good at navigating the system. They haven't and they probably never will because they're constantly under threat from different regulators with different agendas.
Even the state level CO-OPs that were treated with kid gloves are mostly collapsing right now.
Interesting thought but the federal government hasn't given any indication that it's financially prepared to insure the large numbers of people who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid but who can't be covered in a manner that's profitable for the commercial plans. Many of the populations that were falling through the cracks under the pre-ACA system are too expensive for the private sector to insure. This is compounded by the fact that insurers are subject to approval at the state level. You get situations where private insurers abandon a jurisdiction due to the cost of taking on too many sick people and there's no one there to pick up the slack.
I think theres a strong possibility that the ACA will fail due to the incoherence of the regulatory structure and as Will said, I do think it shows that the public option would have destroyed the private competition. Whether or not that's desirable I suppose depends on your politics.
Any acknowledgement of the hit squads is per se racist and xenophobic. Which is why AfD is going to make an even larger than expected entrance into the Bundestag next time the Germans have an election.
I think the government's ambiguous stance on joining anti-ISIS fighters is actually preferable. While it should not in any manner be encouraged, I don't like the idea of people being prosecuted for it. Granted I also think if something bad happens to someone who voluntarily travels into a war zone for combat they should be considered on their own as far as the government is concerned.
I thought it was a good point. Just constructive criticism to the moderators/editors but it might be helpful to get some guidance on where the line crossing occurred. Not saying name and shame or anything but I don't get the impression anyone was trying to run her off and I certainly don't want to contribute to harming the (much appreciated) efforts to get good writers.
The conversation didn't strike me as particularly intense compared to some I've seen/participated in here but it seems others disagree.
I read it the same way Damon did. It's unfortunate it was pulled because I thought it was an interesting piece. I can of course also understand why the author might not want her family life to be the touch point of the discussion that ensued.
I am not yet a parent but there is a sufficiently large age gap between myself and my siblings that I was able to see my brothers going through their teenage years from a more or less adult perspective. Kids can be pretty creative at justifying their mayhem when discipline is in order. If theyre clever enough the excuse will be perfectly designed to pull their parents' strings.
I agree with your sentiment. Teenagers doing dumb teenager stuff probably doesn't merit serious analysis of the political implications. A reminder of the rules of being a good neighbor is probably sufficient.
I'd follow the advice from your friend from Virginia. My suspicion is that you've blown the potential reaction from the neighbor up into something in your mind that is much worse than its likely to be. Even if he is rude or doesn't accept the apology he will hopefully at least have a grudging respect for the mom who required her daughter to do the right thing. That might be important one day down the road.
I don't know. I think there's way too much evidence corroborating the FBI's malfeasance for it to be conspiracy theory. I think the FBI knows there isn't much they can do to stop the true lone wolf/self radicalized murderer but they also know they can never admit that. They go around agitating losers and crazy people into phony plots then patting themselves on the back for foiling them and making people feel safe that the authorities aren't completely impotent.
Now the idea that they might chose not to foil a plot they themselves engineered in order to further some agenda gets into some weird territory...
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What the Trump/Khan Debate Really Says About America”
I can see how I probably wasn't clear previously on the issue of pushing back. I meant that, in other circumstances if someone were to push back on the use of soldiers or their families as political props in a presidential campaign I would find it very refreshing. I find a lot to agree with in the OP on this issue.
Trump's response did not do what I would like to see happen, nor do I find the demagoguery Trump engages in about American Muslims more generally, to which Clinton's actions were no doubt a response, to be anything other than detestable.
See also my comment just above to Morat.
"
Fair enough and maybe I am missing something in my frustration with militarism I've been stewing on the last 15 years (for awhile I was seriously waiting for loyalty oaths to be required to buy a hot dog at a baseball game).
My more recent frustration that there is even a need to refute the types of claims Trump is making about American Muslims and numerous others may also contribute.
"
All you're doing is reaffirming mine, and what I interpret the author's point to be, which is that soldiers (the deader the better) in our political culture have become the most useful political props to the big parties. I don't have to like or agree with Trump to recognize that and I find the tactic concerning even when it's employed against politicians I don't like.
Also being in the military in itself or even dying in the line of duty doesn't demonstrate anything about an individual's politics (though by all accounts I've seen Kareem Khan served honorably). Just ask Nidal Hassan.
"
I don't entirely disagree, but there's a reason the Clinton campaign chose the family of a soldier. Why wasn't it a physician or a teacher or engineer or successful business owner? That would've made the same point about assimilation.
The criticism I'm making here isn't specific to Clinton (the Republicans were shameless about it during the Bush years).
"
Point number 3 is both important and is maybe being missed in the discussion of Khangate or whatever we're calling it. There was an article in the Atlantic a few years ago that argued that a number of factors have moved most Americans too far away from its military to really understand it, and one of the results has been blind hero worship of anyone involved in the institution and even of the institution itself.
This isn't to say we shouldn't have respect for individuals who have made sacrifces, or that Trump isnt guilty of his usual idiocy and tasteless in response to Khan's speech. However, and maybe this was what @aaron-david was saying above, I do think that Khan was used here as a partisan prop, the same way the military and their families have been for decades, and particularly extensively since 9/11. In other circumstances I'd almost be impressed that a major party presidential nominee was willing to aggressively push back in the face of the tactic. Of course it's Trump so instead of the eloquent criticism I'd love to see its the usual wild eyed egotistical and racially charged bluser
"
This is pretty close to my view on the subject. Not saying I'd be against any proposed regime of voter ID laws but the unique history of the United States combined with the unreliable and at times tough to access agencies that would administer the rules make them inherently suspect to me.
I've also never seen convincing evidence that we have a voter fraud problem, which again, raises questions to me about the true intentions.
On “Morning Ed: World {2016.08.16.T}”
As though my post wasn't long enough as it was in support of such an unremarkable point. :)
"
I think this is a fantasy. Significant portions of the population will never be able to pay for routine health maintenance services without being subsidized. Relying on that takes us back to the uninsured problems pre-ACA where people went untreated until the problem was catastrophic and thus much more costly for whoever ended up footing the bill.
"
I agree that the employer model is outdated but there is a role in my opinion for private insurers and that is cost control. It's what Medicare Part C and Medicaid Managed Care are (very imperfectly) experimenting with. I could see a world where risk adjusted private insurers working with ACOs or similar provider organizations get us to full coverage and save money, which as much as it sucks to say, is important.
Of course we aren't anywhere close to that yet but it's that reason that I'm not sure a switch to fee for service single payor is really what we should be aiming for.
"
@stillwater I'm talking about the system as a whole. We've got Medicare covering individuals over 65 but it's really split into 3ish systems. Parts A and B are at heart fully socialized systems where claims go directly to the federal government for payment.
Parts C and D are programs administered by private entities. Part C will be your traditional insurers who get money from the federal government through the risk adjustment process and Part D is the prescription drug program. These entities are for profit, private entities but are also heavily regulated and depended on by the government for Medicare to work.
Next you have your for profit plans, traditionally provided by employers, versions of which are now commercially available for individuals via the exchanges. These plans are regulated primarily at the state level. They cover everyone under 65 or who don't qualify for Medicaid.
Lastly you have Medicaid (including CHIP, etc.) for people with sufficiently low income which is funded by the federal government but administered by the states. Like Medicare, some Medicaid benefits are paid by claims straight to the state agency but there are also Medicaid Managed Care plans administered by private insurance companies that look a lot like Medicare Part C.
All of these systems have their own interested parties, their pros and their cons. What we don't have is a fundamental coherence and it can be extremely challenging to understand how they all work together, including the gaps, perverse incentives, and cost hiding that goes on between them. These gaps and perverse incentives was how we ended up with the large number of uninsured (who were putting pressure on emergency providers which operate in regulatory ecosystems of their own) that the ACA was supposed to address. The problem with the ACA is that it looks to correct the problem of the uninsured which is really just a symptom of the fact that we've got all of these overlapping payors (public and private) with their own incentives and prerogatives, and subject to a variety of different regulations at every level of government. The uninsured were people who fell through the cracks under the old system but by insuring them we've created other unintended consequences.
My point is just that no one would create a system like this from scratch. However it's hard to fix at the margins because of the overlap and different levels of government involved and of course scrapping it and starting over probably isn't possible politically. Also for clarity my point isn't that we don't need regulation just that we need a system that covers everyone and isn't in perpetual conflict with itself.
"
The better question is why do we deliver healthcare through this insurance structure. Even if it was fully public it would probably still be an insurance type system where people are paying into it and someone is determining what's covered and what isn't. That's how single payor (and old school Medicare parts A and B) work, it's just financed through taxes of current or future beneficiaries, as applicable.
The fundamental flaw isn't so much that aspect of it, it's that in this country we've built an incoherent hybrid public-private system with its own entrenched interests and fiefdoms. Our system of government makes comprehensive reform (which I agree is what we would do in a perfect world) really hard to get to.
"
The problem with this theory is it assumes that the big private insurers have gotten good at navigating the system. They haven't and they probably never will because they're constantly under threat from different regulators with different agendas.
Even the state level CO-OPs that were treated with kid gloves are mostly collapsing right now.
"
Interesting thought but the federal government hasn't given any indication that it's financially prepared to insure the large numbers of people who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid but who can't be covered in a manner that's profitable for the commercial plans. Many of the populations that were falling through the cracks under the pre-ACA system are too expensive for the private sector to insure. This is compounded by the fact that insurers are subject to approval at the state level. You get situations where private insurers abandon a jurisdiction due to the cost of taking on too many sick people and there's no one there to pick up the slack.
I think theres a strong possibility that the ACA will fail due to the incoherence of the regulatory structure and as Will said, I do think it shows that the public option would have destroyed the private competition. Whether or not that's desirable I suppose depends on your politics.
"
Any acknowledgement of the hit squads is per se racist and xenophobic. Which is why AfD is going to make an even larger than expected entrance into the Bundestag next time the Germans have an election.
"
I think the government's ambiguous stance on joining anti-ISIS fighters is actually preferable. While it should not in any manner be encouraged, I don't like the idea of people being prosecuted for it. Granted I also think if something bad happens to someone who voluntarily travels into a war zone for combat they should be considered on their own as far as the government is concerned.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.08.15.M}”
I thought it was a good point. Just constructive criticism to the moderators/editors but it might be helpful to get some guidance on where the line crossing occurred. Not saying name and shame or anything but I don't get the impression anyone was trying to run her off and I certainly don't want to contribute to harming the (much appreciated) efforts to get good writers.
The conversation didn't strike me as particularly intense compared to some I've seen/participated in here but it seems others disagree.
"
No disagreement from me.
"
I read it the same way Damon did. It's unfortunate it was pulled because I thought it was an interesting piece. I can of course also understand why the author might not want her family life to be the touch point of the discussion that ensued.
On “(Trump) Sign of the Times”
I am not yet a parent but there is a sufficiently large age gap between myself and my siblings that I was able to see my brothers going through their teenage years from a more or less adult perspective. Kids can be pretty creative at justifying their mayhem when discipline is in order. If theyre clever enough the excuse will be perfectly designed to pull their parents' strings.
"
I agree with your sentiment. Teenagers doing dumb teenager stuff probably doesn't merit serious analysis of the political implications. A reminder of the rules of being a good neighbor is probably sufficient.
"
I'd follow the advice from your friend from Virginia. My suspicion is that you've blown the potential reaction from the neighbor up into something in your mind that is much worse than its likely to be. Even if he is rude or doesn't accept the apology he will hopefully at least have a grudging respect for the mom who required her daughter to do the right thing. That might be important one day down the road.
On “Linky Friday #179: Armies of Darkness”
Cr1, assuming there isn't more to the story, is particularly disturbing and I hope leads to more investigation.
On “Morning Ed: Government {2016.08.11.Th}”
I think the problem with either approach is that they rely on the idea that you can completely separate policy from values.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.08.10.W}”
Maybe he will write in Jodie Foster.
On “FBI Agent Apparently Egged on ‘Draw Muhammad’ Shooter – The Daily Beast”
I don't know. I think there's way too much evidence corroborating the FBI's malfeasance for it to be conspiracy theory. I think the FBI knows there isn't much they can do to stop the true lone wolf/self radicalized murderer but they also know they can never admit that. They go around agitating losers and crazy people into phony plots then patting themselves on the back for foiling them and making people feel safe that the authorities aren't completely impotent.
Now the idea that they might chose not to foil a plot they themselves engineered in order to further some agenda gets into some weird territory...
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.