I started this post as an answer to yet another set of diatribes by the entity centerfielddj in response to my recent post The Democratic Party Is Rapidly Moving to the Left. NeoLibs Will Be Left Behind. (http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2019/2/9/141033/4679) Go there and read them if you can stand the bloviation.
The fact that this entity quotes the mass murderer Lyndon Johnson…and quite likely witting conspirator (before or after the fact) in the JFK murder/coup…as a source to back up its false points is proof enough of the coming demise of the neoliberal/neoconservative wing of the Democratic Party.
Read on.
“Medicare”…wholly owned by the corporate Big Pharma/Big Insurance/Big Med system…is a gigantic lie. It’s the “care” part that is missing. U.S. healthcare ranks 37th in the world in overall performance according to the World Health Organization, and 72nd in level of health. In fact, the only metric where the U.S. is #1 is in health expenditure per capita. (Surprise surprise!!!)
It’s a sick joke.
A sickness joke!!!
AOC ran down the reason for this…and the many other failures of the U.S. government to take care of its citizens…recently.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls out America’s `fundamentally broken’ campaign finance laws
Did you somehow miss this?
Maybe you had a doctor’s appointment.
A friend of mine had one recently. She has pierced ears…a mistake in itself as far as i am concerned, but she did it when she was young and foolish…and one of her earlobes somehow sliced open a little. No pain, a little blood. No emergency.
She’s “covered” by Medicare. The bill? $975 (plus whatever else the clinic would manage to tack on, of course), of which she would have to pay…oh, I don’t know. Whatever. She refused on principle and walked out.
“It’ll heal” she said.
And it will.
How do I know?
Because she teaches piano to some Hindu immigrants…successful plastic surgeons, husband and wife…and when she told them about this they said that:
#1-The price was outrageous for whatever procedure of that sort.
and
#2-“It will heal by itself.”
There’s your vaunted Medicare system, hard at work for the .01%
Multiply that by however many millions of U.S. citizens who are enrolled in Medicare, and what do you get?
72nd in level of health worldwide…behind such “underdeveloped” countries as Jamaica (#8), Morocco (#17), the Solomon Islands (#20), Chile (#23), Costa Rica (#25), Venezuela (!!!#29), Belize (#34)…and we’re only halfway down the list to where the U.S. resides!!!
Multiply that by all of the many other boondoggles being fed through a largely bought-and-sold Congress…many of which now threaten the very survival of life on earth if they are not stopped…and you have a national emergency.
A world-wide emergency, really.
You and the other party hack types who continue to try to paint me as some sort of right wing troll here are either fools and/or tools of a vast criminal enterprise that took over this country during the assassination years, and that enterprise…like all criminal systems…is reaching its final days. It’s simply gotten too blatant to be ignored.
People are finally getting wise to the game. We have Trump to thank for that, actually. Trump, HRC and the Scylla and Charybdis electoral farce that took place…in plain sight of the social media-driven internet…in 2016.
It’s a new day acomin’, centristfield, and people like you aren’t going to be part of it.
An American Spring
Watch.
`Cuz that’s all you’re going to be able to do.
Watch.
And nastily kibitz, I suppose. Which is really all you’re doing now.
Let us pray it comes soon enough to save us all.
Even you.
AG
P.S. Assiduous readers may notice…in all of the snarky comments below from arguebonita and centristfielddj, not a one references my several points in this post.
Not a one.
Just continuing mockery and snark.
Sad.
But…typical McCarthyist tactics.
So it goes in the jive political wars of the day.
Lie after lie from both sides, and when someone actually tries to deal with the truths of the matter?
Both “sides” go on the attack.
Sad…but true.
Ask Bernie Sanders.
Or the various whistleblowers/truth tellers who have been hounded from both sides of the (non-existent) political “aisle” for pointing out he criminality of the U.S. system as it now stands.
Wait’ll they get a load of what Elizabeth Warren had to say as she opened her campaign!!!
Go get ’em, Liz!!!
TELL US MORE. You’re doing great.
You may choose to start by answering these questions:
But really, however you chose to proceed, I just want you to keep on writing. Progressives are just about ready to support so hard your desire to end Medicare and Medicaid. You’ve almost got us persuaded. If you write 13 more diaries making your case for why all Americans would be better off if we ended all Federal health care insurance programs, you might just convince us, oh so fine are your persuasive powers.
Here’s the link to Beto’s statement, with video!
He says:
I agree.
It’s the “high-quality” part that is lacking.
And why?
Because Big Med, Big Pharma and Big Insurance have bought out enough congressmen to guarantee bloated profits from human misery.
Just like PermaWar, only on a domestic level.
Solve that?
It’s a new ballgame.
Let’s continue to tell American citizens the unvarnished truth about their country. As Beto O’Rourke has so plainly stated, he thinks that the good people vastly outnumber the bad people. So do I.
You?
I really don’t think so.
AG
Beto O’Rourke wants to protect, strengthen and grow the protections gained by Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Your word salad fails to obscure the unvarnished truth that Beto opposes your plan to end Medicare and Medicaid.
No use arguing with you, centristfield. You just post the same half-understood versions of my positions/concepts and your outright lies again and again and again.
Groundhog Day.
You’re stuck in your burrow, looking at an outdated calendar.
Farewell.
AG
. . . that “your” [those are “scare quotes”, based on absence of evidence that you’ve ever had an original thought] “positions/concepts” [those are actual quotes indicating your words, verbatim] were even “half-understood” by you . . .
But, alas, there isn’t. Just rambling streams of formless blather, riddled with incomprehension, incoherence, falsehoods, Reality-Denial, lies and slanders.
Tell us more.
I can’t leave these behind:
“…of which she would have to pay…oh, I don’t know. Whatever.”
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Now that’s an incisive and detailed anecdote!!! I’m totes ready to demand that Congress end Medicare and Medicaid NOW.
Also, thank God Arthur is here to talk teens out of foolish behavior. If his work didn’t put him in the position to talk countless teens out of the dangerous scourge of pierced ears, however would the United States survive?
Oh, I forgot, Arthur doesn’t want the United States to survive. Hey, maybe he should just let the kids pierce away; he could bring down the Republic that way.
. . . already on that ever-expanding list of words whose meanings you don’t understand (or at least pretend not to)?
Or has it already been on there for quite some time ( = my best guess)?
centerfielddj has given Arthur about eleventy billion opportunities to renounce Ron Paul. Arthur has never done so. Kinda speaks volumes, at least to the sentient beings among us.
No, Arthur’s rhetorical strategy has never wavered a bit. It’s the Roger Stone strategy:
Admit nothing.
Deny everything.
Attack, attack, attack.
One wonders when Arthur will start attacking Beto O’Rourke and Skexandria Ocasio-Cortez as centrists, as sellouts. What we can be certain of is that whenever he does, he will never acknowledge that he once supported them to the hilt.
Really, Arthur, you could give lessons to Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth.
One wonders when Arthur will start attacking Beto O’Rourke and Skexandria Ocasio-Cortez as centrists, as sellouts.
As soon as it looks like they could `win’.
.
Joel, to your point re. Arthur’s remarkable retreats from his own rhetorical history, click here to wonder at AG’s take on the Clintons during the 2008 Party Presidential primary campaign. In part:
I have NOT “dropped my Hillary routine”, Booman.
I wrote quite clearly:
I do not think that he [Obama] can win the nomination this time. The Clinton forces have it pretty well locked up barring a real Hilary meltdown, and cool as SHE is under fire I doubt that will happen. But he CAN become Vice-President, and I fervently hope that he does.
That was what I said, what I am saying, and what I WILL be saying.
She offers the best, closest and most likely the safest port in this storm. And if Barack Obama ever hopes to hold the office of President of the United States, he had damned well better check out her action with the movers and shakers, because she expresses things in just about as far left a manner as they are liable to support.
Where she REALLY stands?
My gut feeling?
She is an unreconstructed Alinskyite who is looking for more effective ways to get there.
A pragmatic leftie.
WHAT A CONCEPT!!!
Has she made too many promises?
Could be.
We shall soon see, I think.
Am I totally wrong?
Is she really a bloodthirsty America-Firster out to bring the hammer down on any who oppose us?
Sue me.
Because even if she is, she is still the only viable candidate to take us out of RatLand. At WORST, there will be a DemRat feeding frenzy in DC that will put all plans of further warmaking back a year or two.
I can deal with that.
And please…remember her husband’s Presidency. Six years of relative success before his power to get things done got caught in his fly.
Like I said…no change here.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Later…
AG
Go figure.
He never wrote it. And we have always been at war with Eastasia.
Alexandria
I have no complaints about Medicare and I’m on it. I would reform it by changing the 80% payment to 100%. This would eliminate the “Part C” scam that lets corporations belly up to the trough. That should not require more than a 25% increase in the meager Medicare tax. Drug reform is more complex, mainly because it is such a cesspool of greed.
I don’t know the cost of extending medicare down to age 18, but persons 18 to 65 are well known to cost much less medically than those 65 to 100+
On the face of it, it would cost much less than the combo of Obamacare and employer-paid insurance that we have now.