tvashtarkatena

Maybe, maybe not. We'll all see, I guess.

The one that's happening right now in congress over the budget stupid.

Since they post original government and corporate documents, there's not much superficiality about it.

Hmm - seem to remember something about being a chief technical officer of some concern or another and making enough money to quit working and "do whatever the fuck I want" being bandied about some time ago - but I don't care enough to bother searching for the said claims. You are correct Jay. LOL

You care enough to remember that part correctly. As for the additional details you made up for your personal attack...I never gave them out. All in a day's work for a liar. And irrelevant. More compensation wouldn't change my political bent or actions a wit. It would mean that I could afford to give more money away...that would be cool. To think that greater income makes one more conservative might be par for the shitheels you hang with. My peeps got more solid values than that. This country's got a gigantic deficit, and the rich who benefited most from it are gonna have to pay it down, sooner or later.

Modern day China, liar? Um...that's pretty much a wholesale FOR PROFIT venture. The IRON CURTAIN? You're comparing the VA, Kaiser Permanente, and the health care sustems of the rest of the civilized world to the IRON CURTAIN? For real? One thing that is always missing in your posts is sustainability. Never, ever shows up. Hence your support for the Green Revolution - and the most unsustainable (and heavily subsidized) agricultural practices in history that produced it. Goodbye topsoil, ocean health, fossil acquifers, public health, and local control of communities. HELLO PROFITS. Just one example of the what's missing in the asset stripping parasitism that is the modern, national/multinational corporation. Also, it seems that our wealth was ON CREDIT, no? Yeah...just a wee omission there. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for capitalism. Local capitalism, where there's actually a cause and effect relationship between what the company does and the communities affected by its actions. Yours, however, is a short term worship of consumptive materialism ('wealth' according to your ilk), at the expense of the environment, culture, community, public health, egalitarianism, and social stability, of course. Even in the face of planet wide environmental and economic collapse, the good liar stands by his guns. "Oh, just ignore the last 3 years of data..." What we now enjoy is a society where everyone can buy cheap Chinese crap on credit, and everyone is afraid of losing their job, health care, privacy, education, and home. Great. We now have a culture so paranoid that its willing to jump on a fascist bandwagon, thanks in large part to the very same avarice and manipulation practiced by the corporate interests you so love. By all means, however, keep comparing even the slightest corporate regulation to the Iron Curtain or, why not go the distance and go for North Korea? No, not a rhetorical trick at all. When sustainability is considered, all of your arguments fail miserably and obviously. Funny how that works.

Jay's message is that of the typical asset stripper: without the profit motive, mediocrity is the result. The profit motive can and often does turn an organization into a parasite. Profit oriented corporations have proven themselves willing and able to destroy communities, cultures, and an entire planet to squeeze out another good quarter. They are a potent, amoral, destructive force by definition. Anecdotally, the absolute best people I've ever worked with; in terms of talent, brains, motivation, effectiveness, integrity, and lack of personal dysfunction, have been employees of non-profits. The average quality and integrity of for profit corporate worker is...yeah...not that impressive. So, the Rfuck schtick denigrating any organization that isn't parasitically preying on the rest of us to concentrate wealth in their bucket doesn't really fly when held up to any scrutiny at all. Pretty much consistent with the rest of their childish bullshit.

It's actually amazing to me how instantly transparent Jay's bullshit is. The debunking usually takes all of a nanosecond, despite lack of editing prowess.

Um...cosmetic procedures are getting cheaper because demand for them has plummeted due to the crash. This trend has received a ton of press, hell, there's even a cable show that addresses it. Nice attempt to twist the logic around, Jay, but you're just fucking lying again, as usual.

In a non-profit, single payer world we'd HAVE NO CHOICE, cuz non-profits CAN'T COMPETE WITH ONE ANOTHER. Prices would be SET LIKE IN THE SOVIET UNION.

Not to mention the...uh, lobbying that goes on...all to improve the EXCELLENCE OF CARE, of course. You wouldn't want to buy cheap drugs from India or Canada, for example. That would NOT BE EXCELLENT.

Yeah, theoretically, I want a health care organization with the objective of providing the best health care, not maximizing the shareholder value of a bunch of investors who couldn't give less of a shit about that. Or paying for the House in the Hamptons of the company's executive suite. Of course, you NEED those two components - shareholder and executive greed and skimming, to achieve EXCELLENCE OF CARE. Pay no attention to actual comparisons between for profit and non-profit health care providers.

You can have insurance without abolishing price transparency, competition, and incentives to spend as little as necessary. They persist in pretty much every insurance market except for health insurance. Wow. You lie like most people breath. I just shopped for and purchased health insurance a few months ago. It takes about half an hour to have pricing for 3 competing non-profit plans laid out in front of you. EZ PEZY. In contrast, the for profit plans I looked at (not seriously...I wouldn't go there) were large binder clusterfucks of disconnected brochures and fine print. The one I was able to tease the prices out of was significantly more expensive, covered way less, was full of no-service loopholes, and left me far more exposed in case of catastrophe. It had hidden fees all over the place. There was no comparable price comparison service possible or available. Furthermore, one simply needs to type to google the name of these for profits and 'complaint' to instantly learn how many law suits are pending against them for their misleading sales practices, illegally dropping patients or not honoring the policies, etc. So what's this about the greater transparency of for profit health care, you fucking liar?

Yes, I think the solution (there's that word, again), is 3 million foreclosures this year, increase military spending to 700,000 B, and give people making a quarter mil or more a year a fat tax cut. While we're at it, let's continue our successful War on Drugs, fight Gay Marriage, and Abortion Rights. Did I leave anything out of the Rfuck agenda? Oh yeah...surveillance for everyone and torture. Forgot those.

It's called the 'African System'. We already have it.

Furthermore, if I do make a quarter mil a year, I'll STFU, pay whatever taxes are owed, and thank my lucky fuckin stars.

Nope, I'm not that guy, cuz I didn't. Never made a dot com stock option dime. Liar.

Worry not, however. Billcoe still worships you.

Except in this case - the prices at the rapacious and boundlessly greedy and selfish for-profit clinics that are dropping, and the prices at the non-profits that are steadily increasing. Speaking of which - anyone remember McAllen and El Paso? "“In contrast to the Medicare population, the use of and spending per capita for medical services by privately insured populations in McAllen and El Paso was much less divergent, with some exceptions,” the article’s abstract states. “For example, although spending per Medicare member per year was 86 percent higher in McAllen than in El Paso, total spending per member per year in McAllen was 7 percent lower than in El Paso for the population insured by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. We consider possible explanations but conclude that health care providers respond quite differently to incentives in Medicare compared to those in private insurance programs.” http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/29/12/2302.abstract Yeah, I remember the New Yorker article about McCallen (highest per capita health care costs in the country). It flamed private health insurers and providers, and sung the statistical praises of well run non-profits, most notably Kaiser Permanente, as models for how we might move forward. Prices are coming down amongst private health insurers? REALLY? You are not a skilled liar, but you are a prolific one.

Do you know how many rent-a-cops, gardeners, nannies, and Hummer salesmen are going to go jobless if we don't extent those tax cuts?

Go ahead, just TRY to live in Medina on a quarter mil a year and see how long you last!

It's all about jobs, which is why we should give the wealthy a tax break and cut unemployment benefits.

Cuz, like, the wealthiest American's have really honored us with their exemplary service, compassion, fairness, gratitude, and basic values in recent years. We need to keep trusting them to do the right thing.

Not that people making over a quarter mil don't deserve a tax break, you know, so they can create jobs.

Could that be the distant, creaking sound of cartilage calcifying into spinal column, or just the sloppy wriggling of invertebrates pretending to do something noble?