Magox

You are right, the Republican plan is the way to go. It's working really well

There is a bipartisan focus group coming up with a plan. It's a start and it would repeal the employer mandate, the device taxes and would provide some certainty to the individual markets. They should start with that, get that passed right away and from there go to Tax Reform, while regrouping with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and see what else they could do to improve the law. It seems likely to me that the GOP won't be able to get anything done on their own.

Warrantless. That means unconstitutional. "Less than 1 percent" means what? Not even one person was supposed to be subjected to "missteps." That's why we bothered having a Bill of Rights. Dump this program. The safeguards are non-existent. And then prosecute everyone who did this to the American people. Don't dump the program, add more safeguards and prosecute those who violated this program to the absolute fullest extent.

Hopefully I can get some free time and give it a listen. However there is something to be said in regards to this Kansas debate. I'm not aware of the full facts other than it did appear that the tax rates were too low. I'm a big believer in the concept of the Laffer Curve, it is so simple and almost to the point to where you could actually accept it as nearly economic gospel. If you tax too high, economic output and tax revenues go down, if you tax too low, tax revenues go down. In other words there is a sweet spot. The only thing that is uncertain is the shape of the curve. And there is no fixed and settled magic number, there are tons of variables that need to be considered, such as level of spending, economic output etc etc. It's clear to me that in this instance Brownback was a bit too ambitious with his tax cuts relative to his state's spending.

That must explain why Vermont and California are having such an easy time pushing single payer through their far left states

He abused Seymour on that play

I never really thought it about it that way, and you know what? This is exactly what he does

Azalin, my comments shouldn't be considered as an endorsement of these plans but rather an opinion of what I believe to be an inevitability. Also, I was simply pointing out that the Medicare business still has a lot of private corp. components to the industry, which was in response to Joe 6 packs belief that the ACA was meant to destroy private health insurance.

Even under the form of single payer form of health insurance that is being pushed by the progressives which is Medicare-for-all, there would still be a major role for the private insurance industry. Medicare is very seldomly a stand-alone form of health insurance. The vast majority of people on Medicare are on either Medicare Advantage or Medicare supplement plans. Advantage for lower to middle income earners who go for the cheap premiums, higher deductible typically smaller HMO networks and the Medicare supplements for Middle to higher income folks who have access to anyone who accepts Medicare throughout the country with no deductibles and copays with higher premiums. The private insurance industry is still very heavily involved with the Medicare business. I suspect that the biggest issue you would see with the Medicare-for-all aside of the HUGE budget busting costs and additional taxes that I would assume everyone who works would have to pay, is the logistical nightmare and how many hospitals, doctors and medical providers would hate the new reimbursement rates. I wouldn't be surprised to see two other forms of healthcare being provided. Concierge medicine which already exists would probably start becoming a lot more popular. Where a Medical provider and the patient have an agreement where the patient pays the Provider on a retainer basis. They cut out the middle man. And still some private insurers would still provide regular health insurance that of course would have higher reimbursement rates, where they would have access to higher quality doctors who decided to forgo accepting Medicare. The Democrats already have their sights set on Medicare-for-all, even leadership is talking about it. And since the Democrats already won the argument with the American public that government should play a role in the expansion of coverage and that the Republicans have squandered their opportunity, it's just a matter of time before Medicare-for-all becomes the law of the land.

But that's not what we were discussing. I stated that taking away the mandate and allowing the rest of the law to remain in place was a dumb idea and if passed into law would only make it worse for everyone who needed to buy health insurance from the individual market because it would cause everyone's premiums to go even higher than it is. and your response was So it helps some people avoid penalties but makes everyone else's premiums who need health insurance get more expensive. That's not a solution. DC Tom echoed that sentiment This wasn't an argument to preserve Obamacare or a defense of it, as you were alluding to with your response, this was solely on the merits of the Skinny Repeal becoming law. It would have been stupid. But as DOC noted, it was intended to be a vehicle to continue negotiations in Conference. But who here trusts that Trump wouldn't have attempted to force Ryan to just try to push that through and then claim victory? He is so desperate to get a victory I wouldn't have put it past him. This whole process has been strange and Republicans boxed themselves into a corner by not beginning the process of going through regular order and trying to go about this in a bipartisan manner. Yes, yes I know that most Democrats wouldn't have gone along but when he was first inaugurated if Trump hadn't been such a buffoon with his tweets and Republican leadership would have been a little smarter about this, there would have been a little more leverage to negotiate with maybe about 5-10 Democrats on a compromise bill. Now they have absolutely no leverage, Schumer and Pelosi will be steering the ship. I know a lot of you along with Trump believe they should just let it "fail" and then that will bring Democrats to the table. Good luck with that, contrary to your beliefs, Republicans will get as much if not more of the blame than Democrats. People will know that the administration and Republicans in bad faith would be attempting to sabotage existing law and it would come at the expense of real people attempting to obtain insurance. In other words they would be used as pawns in this political game. It won't work and I sincerely hope that isn't the strategy for the sake of all people attempting to get health insurance from the individual markets. I don't know what they should do now, I guess they should pass a temporary measure to shore up the markets because the carriers need to have some certainty on what the landscape is going to be for rates this upcoming season and then begin conversations with Democrats and see if they can come to some sort of deal. Then again, they could just try to come up with some only Republican alternative, but we've already seen how that has been working out.

Don't get me wrong, I think they made the wrong vote and I believe they should have to answer to their constituents for the vote not to proceed. I also don't like the mandate as well and if I crafted a law it wouldn't have one. But just taking the repeal away is retarded for the reasons I had mentioned before. And I think you are an ok dude, just that I'm tired of trying to reason with you when you really don't either have the capability to fully process information you digest or don't have a desire to reason.

It is what it is

Of course you would, you aren't all up there in the mental processing department. Yes, that would have been fine. I was speaking to it actually becoming law.

This "Skinny Repeal" is retarded. If you take away the mandate and leave everything else in place, all it will do is cause premiums to go up even higher. What kind of a dumbass idea is this?

I think fans tend to like potentially high ceiling players and Cardale certainly from a physical standpoint fit the bill. But I will take what the new Regime's word was when they took over when they said that they were going to evaluate each player before the season began and adjust their rosters accordingly. They drafted Peterman, they evaluated Cardale and made the calculation that Peterman would be a better fit for what they are trying to do. That's the bottom line.

Senator Collins has no interest in working with her own party. I'm surprised Rand Paul went along with the vote, apparently they will at least vote on a straight repeal just so he can be on the record. And I'm very surprised Lisa Murk. didn't vote to advance it. I really don't have a good feel of whether this will get done. I suppose there will have to be some provisions that give states the option to opt out of some of the regulations to appease the conservative wing of the party. And I'm guessing they will preserve some of the taxes on the so-called rich and set aside more money for subsidies to get some of the more moderates. Not sure that will be enough.

There is not much here that I would disagree with. I also highly doubt that there was any Russian collusion but with these sort of investigations, Mueller is expected to come up with something and I'm sure as he digs and expands his probe there will be something that he finds. Odds are if the FBI were to investigate just about anyone this much that they'd find something.

They did. And you are right, Obama did understand much of what was written in the law, but he also either misrepresented what was in it or outright lied. But none the less, he had a much stronger grasp of what their bill was than what Trump does of his. I still can't believe that he actually was elected, to this day it still blows my mind.

Huh, I thought it would have been Russia Russia Russia.

I'm not saying that, my point was that from my perspective Kirby seemed to be glossing over the construct and history of their organizations relative to ours. I agree with that, just pointing out that for many people I'd imagine they look at the organization just as much if not more than their recent record.

You're dismissing the fact that the Bills organization has shown itself to be inept and lacking direction whereas the Chargers and Ravens have shown that they can succeed at a higher level than the Bills. I'm not saying that they are better destinations than the Bills but simply that you aren't taking nearly as much into consideration from my perspective that those organizations have generally been better than the Bills over the past 15 years.

Rich Lowry nails it Just about a perfect write up of dysfunction of the GOP. They deserve to be voted out of office.

yep.

I don't doubt that, just commenting on my observations of him over the years. Did you see how he handled that CNN reporter? He shived CNN in a respectful manner.

I mentioned this in an earlier thread. I've been following Scaramucci for probably a little over a decade now, back in my brokerage days. The guy has always been one cool cat.