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Observation: Republican party intimidated by the worst President in U.S. history


Burgold

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Looks like Sarah Palin is moving closer to running. Will she do it.

She will get the Tea Party/Social Conservative vote. Romney will probably have the Establishment vote unless Pawlenty can pull an upset. Obama has nothing to worry about other than the economy tanking.

Pawlenty can not beat Palin but If Palin runs, it will have to be somebody else in the Party that beats her I think.

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Basic healthcare like basic education basic sdefense is maintenance, but here is the problem first off the defense has gone beyond basic protection and is now allowing many to get rich and is costing the tax payers more.

Medicare does not cover the entire population and from the ads on tv seems to pay for too many frills ie motor scooters.

And people have to realize you have to pay for things, you want the worlds largest military it costs

You want to drive everywhere then oil goes up

You want to eat all you can eat and drink pop by the gallon you are going to end up using more health care

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At the same time as the government holds the line on how much money it would actually paying out for the "vouchers" under the Paul plan.

Under any plan, the government will be subsidizing the poor and sick more. When the major cuts come to the Medicare status quo (inevitable), do you think they'll just tell poor people that they can't have access to a subsidy? I suppose it's possible if it gets that bad.

Pharma patents are way down, and many of the drugs that there are patents for have dubious long term medical affects with respect to outcomes.

There's a slow down on things going to generics because there was a slow down on new patents.

Big movement to very costly biologics right now. Specialty meds are the new cost drivers.

---------- Post added May-27th-2011 at 09:42 AM ----------

You want to eat all you can eat and drink pop by the gallon you are going to end up using more health care

So, should obese people pay higher premiums?

---------- Post added May-27th-2011 at 09:56 AM ----------

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/05/palin-creates-buzz-gives-no-sign-running#ixzz1NW7YHl4u

Palin creates buzz but rivals bet she won't run

"Watch what she has done," says the Republican close to Romney. "Has she contacted one major donor across the country about putting together an organization? Has she talked to one member of the Republican National Committee about working for a campaign, or one governor, or one former governor about working for a campaign? The answer is no."
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Looks like Sarah Palin is moving closer to running. Will she do it.

She will get the Tea Party/Social Conservative vote. Romney will probably have the Establishment vote unless Pawlenty can pull an upset. Obama has nothing to worry about other than the economy tanking.

I think between the tea party and social conservatives that's the majority of the folks left in the GOP today. If Palin get's their vote then she is the nominee.....

But I don't think she's a lock to do this. Romney has been working for years to tie up social conservatives and he's defiinitely made many inroads. He could definitely get social conservatives leaving Palin with the tea party insurgents. Could be a Romney Pallin ticket come november.... Oh my... maybe Pallin Romney?

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I think between the tea party and social conservatives that's the majority of the folks left in the GOP today. If Palin get's their vote then she is the nominee.....

But I don't think she's a lock to do this. Romney has been working for years to tie up social conservatives and he's defiinitely made many inroads. He could definitely get social conservatives leaving Palin with the tea party insurgents. Could be a Romney Pallin ticket come november.... Oh my... maybe Pallin Romney?

Romney will not win. I'm just telling you guys, Romney will never win the nomination because of the Mass Health Care thing. He won't step away from that and the GOP won't forgive him for it.

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Under any plan, the government will be subsidizing the poor and sick more. When the major cuts come to the Medicare status quo (inevitable), do you think they'll just tell poor people that they can't have access to a subsidy? I suppose it's possible if it gets that bad.

Big movement to very costly biologics right now. Specialty meds are the new cost drivers.

I don't know. I just don't see why people think the government can't directly tell people that they can't get certain care, but they think that the government is going to say no to paying most of the costs for a private insurance plan that covers certain care.

What is the difference between:

"I need hospice. I'm voting for people that will make sure Medicare covers hospice." and "I need hospice. I'm voting for people that will make sure my government voucher is large enough that I can afford a private insurance plan that will cover my hospice."

The number is still fewer in terms of patents than it was through the 1990s, but yes the best healthcare we can afford is only going to get more expensive as time goes on. Personalized medicine, which is where we are going, is going to be very expensive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalized_medicine

It is becoming clear to me that technology isn't REALLY driving down costs in many fields. The samething is happening in entertainment. I'd guess the costs of early 1980s television (in terms of the tv and making the shows) has come down, but nobody watches early 1980s television and most people pay more for their television (in terms of the tv and getting the things they do watch (e.g. cable)), then they did.

We could deliver early 1980s medical care pretty cheaply today, but nobody wants early 1980s medical care.

Across the board, instead of just advancing, we need to think about driving down costs in reality. Continuing to fund advancements that we can't really afford doesn't make much sense.

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From yesterday's NY Times re: Medicare payment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/opinion/26redberg.html

Medicare spends a fortune each year on procedures that have no proven benefit and should not be covered. Examples abound:

• Medicare pays for routine screening colonoscopies in patients over 75 even though the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts financed by the Department of Health and Human Services, advises against them (and against any colonoscopies for patients over 85), because it takes at least eight years to realize any benefits from the procedure. Moreover, colonoscopies carry risks of serious complications (like perforations) and often lead to further unnecessary procedures (like biopsies). In 2009, Medicare paid doctors more than $100 million for nearly 550,000 screening colonoscopies; around 40 percent were for patients over 75.

• The task force recommends against screening for prostate cancer in men 75 and older, and screening for cervical cancer in women 65 and older who have had a previous normal Pap smear, but Medicare spent more than $50 million in 2008 on such screenings, as well as additional money on unnecessary procedures that often follow.

• Two recent randomized trials found that patients receiving two popular procedures for vertebral fractures, kyphoplasty and vertebroplasty, experienced no more relief than those receiving a sham procedure. Besides being ineffective, these procedures carry considerable risks. Nevertheless, Medicare pays for 100,000 of these procedures a year, at a cost of around $1 billion.

• Multiple clinical trials have shown that cardiac stents are no more effective than drugs or lifestyle changes in preventing heart attacks or death. Although some studies have shown that stents provide short-term relief of chest pain, up to 30 percent of patients receiving stents have no chest pain to begin with, and thus derive no more benefit from this invasive procedure than from equally effective and far less expensive medicines. Risks associated with stent implantation, meanwhile, include exposure to radiation and to dyes that can damage the kidneys, and in rare cases, death from the stent itself. Yet one study estimated that Medicare spends $1.6 billion on drug-coated stents (the most common type of cardiac stents) annually.

• A recent study found that one-fifth of all implantable cardiac defibrillators were placed in patients who, according to clinical guidelines, will not benefit from them. But Medicare pays for them anyway, at a cost of $50,000 to $100,000 per device implantation.

The full extent of Medicare payments for procedures with no known benefit needs to be quantified. But the estimates are substantial. The chief actuary for Medicare estimates that 15 percent to 30 percent of health care expenditures are wasteful. Medicare spending exceeded $500 billion in 2010, suggesting that $75 billion to $150 billion could be cut without reducing needed services.

Why does Medicare spend so much for procedures and devices on patients who get no benefit and incur risks from them?

One reason is that Medicare’s reimbursement procedures are not sophisticated enough to track the appropriateness of the care provided. Medicare delegates its claims administration to private local contractors based on how quickly and cheaply they can process claims.

These contractors have few incentives to audit the taxpayer dollars they are paying out, and even if they wanted to, they would need information often not available on the claim form. For example, a claims administrator, processing a claim for a screening colonoscopy, does not know when the patient’s last colonoscopy was, or whether there was a new clinical reason for repeating it. While this information is available, finding it would require extra steps, and there are no incentives to do so.

Moreover, denying payment after a procedure is performed invites the wrath of both patient and physician. Medicare and private insurers are also keen to avoid situations that could be viewed as telling doctors how to practice medicine — even if such advice is in the patient’s best interest. The political sensitivity of limiting services based on age, for example, was illustrated by the uproar over the Preventive Services Task Force’s finding two years ago that women in their 40s do not benefit from routine mammography.

Another factor is the shocking chasm between Medicare coverage and clinical evidence. Our medical culture is such that if the choice is between doing a test and not doing one, it is considered better care to do the test. So while Medicare is obligated to follow the task force’s recommendations to cover new preventive services, it has no similar mandate to deny coverage for services for which the task force has found no benefit.

Changing the system would be relatively easy administratively, but would require a firm commitment to determining whether tests and procedures truly benefit patients before performing them. Unfortunately, in a political environment in which doctors providing end-of-life counseling are called death panels, and in which powerful constituencies seek to preserve an ever-increasing array of procedures and device sales, this solution remains hidden in plain view.

The last bolded sentence will forever be the case if politicians are in charge of our healthcare.

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Romney will not win. I'm just telling you guys, Romney will never win the nomination because of the Mass Health Care thing. He won't step away from that and the GOP won't forgive him for it.

2 commercials should do him in:

A commerical with a smiley Romney besides the word: Romneycare morphing into a smiliing Obama besides the word: OBamacare.

A picture of flip flop sandal and showing Romney flipping on the issues.

I won't discount him but I agree with you that he won't be the nominee because the voters will not vote for him.

---------- Post added May-27th-2011 at 05:05 PM ----------

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/common/pop_vote.html

You know conservatives always seems to be deriding Obama vote total, saying it wasn't that much. Compare to some other elections Obama does pretty well and his victory was pretty significant.

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I think that's Yao Ming, isn't it?

Haha. Yeah thats where the meme face came from originally. The drawn one is used on the internet in comics and what not. "It is typically used as a reaction face to convey a dismissive attitude towards someone or something." (from knowyourmeme).

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Haha. Yeah thats where the meme face came from originally. The drawn one is used on the internet in comics and what not. "It is typically used as a reaction face to convey a dismissive attitude towards someone or something." (from knowyourmeme).

Oh. I suspect it would be more like this:

sQAwp.gif

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Romney will not win. I'm just telling you guys, Romney will never win the nomination because of the Mass Health Care thing. He won't step away from that and the GOP won't forgive him for it.

He's already stepped away from that. Romney has said his major achievement while gov of Ma was a mistake regarding his healthcare.

Romney isn't really leaving it up to chance. Romney started hiring social conservative politicians and their staff two years ago as consultants. He's systematically buying up their support. He's a smart crafty polititian....

Saw a poll today... Guiliani was actually leading the presidential pack , Romney was a close second, Pallin a close third. Rudy would be an interesting candidate as long as he could make a complete sentence without saying 9-11.

---------- Post added May-27th-2011 at 07:22 PM ----------

Huntsman and Palin make a more interesting pairing...as long as ya are fantasizing.

Huntsman has worse bagage than Romney in the GOP. Huntsman actually worked for Obama and has been quoted very recently with pretty moderate positions.

Huntsman has the money to square off with Romny, might be the only one who does; his major problem though is Mitt has been working now for 2 years and he would have a very hard time catching up to Mitt.

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From yesterday's NY Times re: Medicare payment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/opinion/26redberg.html

Like, I said the government is going to have to say no more. I don't understand why people think the government will say no through a voucher system (e.g. it will keep the amount of money it is contributing via the voucher low), but can't say no through a direct federal insurance program like medicare).

I also love the snip at the end. Since the Republicans are incapable of having an honest conversation about health care reform, we must accept the Republican plan.

If you don't go along with what I want, I'll lie about what you want to do, and then use my lies as the reason you must go along with what I want.

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Thats not goofy at all!

I was being sarcastic, Paul becomes more viable the farther left the major Rep candidates seem

Gonna be interesting,but this early those type of polls are simply name recognition driven.......Poor Pawlenty got's some work to do.

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I was being sarcastic, Paul becomes more viable the farther left the major Rep candidates seem

Gonna be interesting,but this early those type of polls are simply name recognition driven.......Poor Pawlenty got's some work to do.

I know ya were man, alls good. I was messing around too.

I do, however, agree that right now its all name recognition. Something Paul had nearly zero of the last go around. This is a big change and I hope it brings more influence in debate topics, and maybe even equal treatment for him now too. Last time, if you recall, he was shut out of debates, and outright not included in polls and news stories about the candidates.

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I know ya were man, alls good. I was messing around too.

I do, however, agree that right now its all name recognition. Something Paul had nearly zero of the last go around. This is a big change and I hope it brings more influence in debate topics, and maybe even equal treatment for him now too. Last time, if you recall, he was shut out of debates, and outright not included in polls and news stories about the candidates.

I distinctly recall the televised debate on the West Coast (in the last election run up and broadcast on CNN), i don't recall the venue, when the cameras seemed like they didn't even want to show that Ron Paul was even there. He was thrown a token question or two but I found it incredibly bad and biased but perhaps this was because he wasn't viewed then as a viable candidate. I tuned in for what he would say and it was as if the moderator forgot he was even involved.

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I distinctly recall the televised debate on the West Coast (in the last election run up and broadcast on CNN), i don't recall the venue, when the cameras seemed like they didn't even want to show that Ron Paul was even there. He was thrown a token question or two but I found it incredibly bad and biased but perhaps this was because he wasn't viewed then as a viable candidate. I tuned in for what he would say and it was as if the moderator forgot he was even involved.

I think that might have been the PBS one with Tavis Smiley moderating.

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