[Kaitlyn S]

 jonottawa, on 2016-December-03, 15:15, said:

As you seem to acknowledge, healthcare is complicated. There is an unlimited demand for healthcare, especially if you include mental health, dentistry, vision, cosmetic medicine & (as Hillary promised) give coverage to the 20M+ non-citizens living in the US illegally.

If the government pays for gender reassignment surgery and all associated medicine, you may see a huge increase in health care costs as some people who previously lived with their current gender decide to take advantage of it.

I tried to find out whether it was currently covered and read several articles. They give me inconsistent answers - some say it's covered; some say in theory it's covered but in practice you probably can't get it, and some say that politicians hope to get it covered.

[cherdano]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 15:40, said:

If the government pays for gender reassignment surgery and all associated medicine, you may see a huge increase in health care costs as some people who previously lived with their current gender decide to take advantage of it.

LOL.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2016-December-03, 14:53, said:

Good grief Winstonm! Two things: In your post, you said "The people who voted for Trump appear to be uninterested in facts"; and now you're suggesting that in order to understand the essential meaning of words like "supporter" which is not the same as "voter" and the default rules governing the implicit use of "all" vs "some" we have to visit the dark corners of the twitter universe. This strange use of language by you is worrisome. Berlusconi voters woke up. So will Trump voters, especially if we shift the discussion to issues. I think you're underestimating the power of the water cooler to lead the way.

So sue me. I misspoke (er...typed). My position is simple. You cannot reason with faith - faith is antithesis of reason. Trump support is faith-based. Not all Trump votes came from Trump supporters. Is that clear enough?

Feel free to disagree.

[Winstonm]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 14:24, said:

I'd like to think that if I saw any Hitler-like antics, I would start a campaign of friends and acquaintances writing to congressmen to put a stop to it.

What exactly are Hitler-like antics? If you look at history - film documentary - you will see that Hitler rode into power on a wave of populist support and was welcomed with open arms and huge positive demonstrations in both Gernany and then later, Austria.

You may like to think yourself different - perhaps superior to - Germans and Autrians of the 1930's. I don't think we are any different. We are all still humans and our brains have not changed. And it appears we are still as susceptible to deception.

PBS (I think) played a documentary just 2 of 3 weeks ago and I'm sorry I can't remember the title but it was comprised of home videos concerning Hitler coming to power. It was eye-opening and difficult to watch. He did not come into power surreptitiously but openly and with great popular support and fanfare with huge gatherings of the faithful smiling and laughing and happy that he had won.

[jonottawa]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 15:40, said:

If the government pays for gender reassignment surgery and all associated medicine, you may see a huge increase in health care costs as some people who previously lived with their current gender decide to take advantage of it.

I tried to find out whether it was currently covered and read several articles. They give me inconsistent answers - some say it's covered; some say in theory it's covered but in practice you probably can't get it, and some say that politicians hope to get it covered.

I agree that that's something I wouldn't cover (in my 'perfect' health care system.) But I don't see that as a fruitful topic of conversation here, it'll only rustle people's jimmies even more than they already are. Nor do I think that it would lead to a "huge increase in health care costs" only because it's so rare.

Of course if our culture continues down the path it's on, maybe it'll become far more commonplace, who could know.

[jonottawa]

I must say I AM disappointed that repealing ACA seems to be President Trump's FIRST order of business. It's a really bad idea strategically imo, much better to let premiums skyrocket for a couple more years (let its unpopularity fester and its unaffordability become apparent to all rational observers) and then repeal it just before the mid-terms. It's also a good bargaining chip with many congressional R's, who are MUCH more enthusiastic about repealing Obamacare than they are about building a southern border wall or preventing non-citizens living in the US illegally from working or receiving government benefits. It also alienates any Democrats who MIGHT be tempted to cooperate (on some other issue) with the new administration. It's kinda 'IN YOUR FACE.' Finally, it's a blame transfer for a problem that can't realistically be solved from the Democrats to the Republicans. Why would you be in any rush to transfer blame from your opponent onto yourself?

Surprisingly, President Trump didn't seek my input on this issue, though.

[kenberg]

 jonottawa, on 2016-December-03, 15:15, said:

You seem to be pretending that the ACA is working great. It's not!

As you seem to acknowledge, healthcare is complicated. There is an unlimited demand for healthcare, especially if you include mental health, dentistry, vision, cosmetic medicine & (as Hillary promised) give coverage to the 20M+ non-citizens living in the US illegally.

So instead of telling us that you don't believe a word Trump says, how about telling us what your solution is. And tell us how you'd pay for it. And tell us how you'd get it passed.

It starts with both sides agreeing not to demonize the other side. And with rejecting money from lobbyists who work for the AMA or for Big Pharma. Since none of that will ever happen, it seems inevitable that we are doomed to have a broken health care system NO MATTER WHO IS IN CHARGE.

Doctors are some of the smartest people around. Do any of them come up with and promote affordable sensible proposals on how THEIR PROFESSION should operate? No. Because they're happy with the status quo, no matter how unsustainable that system might be.

"You seem to be pretending that the ACA is working great. It's not!"
I pretend no such thing.


"So instead of telling us that you don't believe a word Trump says, how about telling us what your solution is. And tell us how you'd pay for it. And tell us how you'd get it passed."
You want me to re-write health care?

"It starts with both sides agreeing not to demonize the other side."
Change that to " all sides agreeing not to demonize the other sides." and we might have a deal

"Doctors are some of the smartest people around."
My doctor and I get along fine right now, and I don't plan to jeopardize that with a debate over which of us is smarter. When I first moved some years back the first doctor i signed up with definitely did not fit that description.
But the main point here is that doctors are very busy doing the important work that they do. I am seeing a guy in a few days who, a few years back, helped me witha very large kidney stone. I am very glad he is doing what he is doing rather than sitting on some committee re-writing healthcare regulations. We do what we do.

Ok, you asked for my thoughts. I will give you some. But please recall that I did not run for president on a platform of replacing the ACA with something really terrific.

I know people who are on or have been on Medicaid. I am on Medicare. I know people who are working hard, making incomes that are too high, but not by much, to qualify for Medicaid. Now I don't ask them for the medical or financial details of their lives, but I believe the following is true:
Medicare gives very good treatment, it is a godsend for children of poor parents. This is great, but it is also much better than what the parents can afford when they move up so that they no longer qualify for Medicaid. This is a problem. People bust their butts to become self-supporting and suddenly find that health care, at the level they had under Medicaid. is un-affordable. I know there are subsidies, but my understanding is that it's still a tough situation.

Now the above is just one thing, and I am far from certain of the details. I have no direct experience. I have not dome a serious study. I have talked with people who have had direct experience, but as I say I do not aggressively quiz them.

And, definitely, thought must be given to what we can actually do. I greatly appreciate the peace of mind that Medicare provides. I understand that there are limits to what i can reasonably expect the government, aka the citizens of the nation, to do for me. Burger King gives me a 10% senior discount on my Whopper. That's nice. I don't expect a free Whopper.

This is why I said some posts back that honesty and clarity is essential. I think that the supporters have dismissed any problems with the ACA, I think that the opponents have seriously exaggerated problems . And cooperation has been a long ago memory. And yes, the good old days were not always so very good either.

I hope that a clear picture emerges. Something where, five years from now, people will say "It's working as planned". As I get it, this is partially true of the ACA, but only partially.

Now I will say more about not trusting Trump. First off, I admit it. I don't trust him because I don't trust him. Maybe I will have to eat my words, but I have not been too wrong too often in this sort of assessment. But I can be a little more detailed. I mentioned before about the "illegal voting". If there are credible problems with the integrity of the voting process, I am fully in favor of investigating it and dealing with it. A Midnight tweet is not what I have in mind, and certainly not what I would hope for from someone who will become president in six weeks or so. I find it bizarre. And I don't trust this deal with Carrier. In post 3372 Y66 cites an article . I haven't read it in detail but the general idea seems to match mine. Whatever the benefits of this one deal with this one company, this is an approach that spells trouble down the line. It might work fine if you are a real estate developer dealing with a mobbed up union, but I would like us to try for better.

At the base, I recognize a hustler when I see one. Or at least I think I do. And that's not the sort of person I want in the oval office.But he will be there, and I believe in facing reality.



.

[mikeh]

 cherdano, on 2016-December-03, 15:37, said:

Good idea. A good start would be not to claim, without any shred of evidence, that millions of undocumented immigrants are both stupid and malicious enough to commit voter fraud.

Calling out blatant lies as lies and criticizing those who spread such lies is not 'demonizing'

[jonottawa]

 kenberg, on 2016-December-03, 16:55, said:

I understand that there are limits to what i can reasonably expect the government, aka the citizens of the nation, to do for me. Burger King gives me a 10% senior discount on my Whopper. That's nice. I don't expect a free Whopper.

And there's the rub. This generation is raised to expect (feel entitled to) a free Whopper with extra pickles and extra mayo! Socialized medicine works when a society instills old fashioned values like a strong work ethic, personal responsibility & patriotism (or at least a willingness to sacrifice SOMETHING for the greater good.) When people say 'Hey, maybe I shouldn't abuse the system. Maybe I should eat healthy and exercise, etc.' The JFK (Ask not ...) ethos in America is dead (or at least on life support.)

 kenberg, on 2016-December-03, 16:55, said:

And I don't trust this deal with Carrier. In post 3372 Y66 cites an article . I haven't read it in detail but the general idea seems to match mine. Whatever the benefits of this one deal with this one company, this is an approach that spells trouble down the line. It might work fine if you are a real estate developer dealing with a mobbed up union, but I would like us to try for better.

Look who agrees with you. (FWIW I'm agnostic on this particular case.)

[kenberg]

 jonottawa, on 2016-December-03, 17:56, said:

Look who agrees with you.

this is seriously frightening

[hrothgar]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 14:24, said:

I'd like to think that if I saw any Hitler-like antics, I would start a campaign of friends and acquaintances writing to congressmen to put a stop to it.

"Antics" seems like a rather strange word to apply to Hitler.

With this said and done, I am curious whether you have any real familiarity with German history.

Have you read Evans or Kershaw or Arendt?

[mikeh]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 15:40, said:

If the government pays for gender reassignment surgery and all associated medicine, you may see a huge increase in health care costs as some people who previously lived with their current gender decide to take advantage of it.

I tried to find out whether it was currently covered and read several articles. They give me inconsistent answers - some say it's covered; some say in theory it's covered but in practice you probably can't get it, and some say that politicians hope to get it covered.

By far and away the largest single component of health care costs relates to efforts to preserve and extend the last months of life of a sick patient. The use of extraordinary measures, often spent on people with no or virtually no quality of life...sometimes on people with no consciousness at all....far dwarves giving free gender-reassignment to all who will flock to have it should it become almost free....all those millions and millions of unhappy people trapped in the body of the wrong gender.

Where do you get these notions?

Take a guess where the US ranks in average life expectancy in the world. With a system that is by far and away the most expensive in the world, where do you think it ranks as of 2016?

The good news is that it ranks ahead of Cuba (by one place) and Albania (by a handful).

It ranks 31st.

Canada, with our horrible single payer nationalized system, and huge waiting lists for elective surgery, ranks 12th and Canadians live, on average, 3 years longer than Americans.

In terms of the top 35 or so countries by economic standards, the US has the 5th worst infant mortality rate.

Somehow I don't see gender reassignment surgery as the main reason.

You Americans spend hundreds of thousands per patient keeping terminally ill wealthy or well-insured patients alive for an extra month or two, while denying reasonable preventative care to tens of millions of poor people, in a society in which socio-economic mobility is virtually non-existent, and Republicans are poised to cut healthcare for the poor even more.

And you are worried about transgender people getting surgery.

Btw, do you know how long it took to find these facts, compiled by the UN? 60 seconds....it took that long because I googled firstly life expectancy and secondly infant mortality.

Getting facts isn't that difficult, you know.

[mikeh]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-03, 13:58, said:

I had to laugh at the irony of the whole credibility thing - I was told that I lost credibility when I posted about Hillary being involved with murders. I was convinced that this is unlikely, and am taking the stance that it is unlikely with my conservative friends. Now I'm losing credibility with them (their point being that it's so obvious that Hillary was involved with murders and I'm trying to convince them otherwise, so what other lies am I propagating?)

It's really simple.

When your friends tell you that it is obvious that Hillary was involved with murders, ask them to find the facts to support that. Take a look at the sources. Reference the recent study on fake news sites, and cross-reference.

Look for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, or any news site that has a (long) history of publishing news, not propaganda.

Challenge them to find facts, not the ravings of the looney right wing.

Believe it or not, and your posts suggest that you don't, there is a difference between made up fantasies and demonstrable facts. If you discover this and your friends don't, then your choices are pretty simple. Go back to living in a republican fantasy, in which truth is irrelevant, or get new friends....friends you can actually have a reality-based discussion with.

[y66]

From Why Blue States Are the Real ‘Tea Party’ by Steven Johnson NYT 2016.12.3

Quote

When the modern Tea Party movement coalesced in the early days of the Obama presidency, its allusion to the political grievances of the protesters in Boston Harbor a couple of hundred years earlier seemed plausible enough: Its members felt that their taxes were too high and their interests not adequately represented by the remote authorities in Washington.

But the election of 2016 presents a challenge to that historical lineage. The home states to the Tea Party are actually doing great on the taxation and representation front. It’s the progressive blue states that should be protesting.

Start with the Electoral College. It has always deviated from the one-person-one-vote system that most Americans imagine they live in, but demographic shifts in recent years have made its prejudices more conspicuous, culminating in the striking gap between Hillary Clinton’s decisive popular vote victory and her Electoral College loss. Thanks to the two extra votes delivered to each state for its two senators, the Electoral College gives less populated states a higher weight, per capita, than it gives more populated states in the decision of who should be the next president.

This was always a betrayal of one-person-one-vote equality, in that a voter in rural Wyoming has more than three times the power of a voter in New Jersey, the country’s most densely populated state. But those imbalances have become far more glaring, thanks to a filter bubble more pronounced than anything on Facebook: the “big sort” that has concentrated Democrats in cities and inner-ring suburbs, and Republicans in exurbs and rural counties.

The right way to think about the political conflict in this country is not red state versus blue state, but red country versus blue city. And yet we are voting in a system explicitly designed to tip the scales toward the countryside.

But that’s only part of the imbalance. When the founders were plotting the Electoral College, more urban states to the north had significant debt, while the rural Southern states were in better financial shape, thanks in part to the free labor of slavery. Recall the line from “Cabinet Battle #1” from the musical “Hamilton”:

“If New York’s in debt —

Why should Virginia bear it? Our debts are paid, I’m afraid

Don’t tax the South cuz we got it made in the shade”

There’s a straight line that connects that caricature of more urban Northern states living beyond their means in the late 1700s to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens in the 1980s: the prevailing sense that the big cities are dependent on government bailouts and benefits, while the less dense regions live responsibly. That sketch might have been accurate two centuries ago (at least if you took slavery out of the equation) but it bears no resemblance to the current economic map of the United States, where the major cities are now overwhelmingly the engines of economic growth and wealth creation — and also tax revenue.

For complicated reasons — some of which have to do with rural poverty, some of which have to do with the basic physics of supporting infrastructure in low-density regions — a disproportionate amount of per capita federal spending and benefits now flow down to the low-density states. According to a study by the Tax Foundation conducted several years ago, for every dollar New Jersey pays in federal taxes, it receives 61 cents in benefits and other federal spending. For the same dollar of taxes Wyoming spends, it gets $1.11 back.

Put those two trends together and you have a grievance worthy of the original Tea Party: more taxation with less representation. The urban states are subsidizing the rural states, and yet somehow in return, the rural states get more power at the voting booth.

You can represent the injustice of this arrangement mathematically. Think of it as two different kinds of return on investment: how much does each state receive for every dollar it pays in taxes, and how much Electoral College influence does each state get for each vote cast. Take the average of those two data points and you have a measure of which states are getting shortchanged by the system. Call it the disenfranchisement index.

The states that rank at the top of this list are the ones that are paying the highest proportion of the country’s bills while ranking lowest in terms of voting power in the Electoral College. The first 12 on the list have all voted for the Democratic candidate in at least two of the last three elections, and all but two of them went for Mrs. Clinton in 2016: New Jersey, Minnesota, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut, California, Washington and Oregon.

Those states make up the overwhelming majority of Hillary Clinton’s Electoral College support in 2016. They are also paying billions of dollars of taxes and receiving only a fraction back in benefits and other federal spending. By contrast, 19 of the 25 most empowered (and largely rural) states went for Mr. Trump.

The gap between the two extremes is remarkable. South Dakota, one of the most empowered states in the country, received almost twice the return on taxes as California, the country’s most populated state, while also commanding nearly twice as much power per capita in the Electoral College. If anyone should be declaring themselves the heirs to the Boston patriots who rebelled against the unjust taxation of King George, it’s the big city blue state citizens who are funding a system that by law undercounts their votes.

To date, wealthy states like California, New York and New Jersey have not expressed much outrage at this situation, in part because they have experienced less economic anxiety than some of the struggling red states and in part because the injustice has not been as visible during the Obama years, thanks to his Electoral College victories. But as our cities get wealthier and more diverse and begin to realize how the system is genuinely “rigged” against them, tectonic forces may well be unleashed.

If a Trump administration that urban states voted overwhelmingly against starts curtailing voting rights and rolling back drug-law reform, reneging on the Paris climate accord, deporting immigrants and appointing justices that favor overturning Roe v. Wade, states like California and Massachusetts are sure to start asking hard questions about why they are subsidizing a government that doesn’t give them an equal vote.

[Elianna]

 Winstonm, on 2016-December-03, 10:45, said:

There is little doubt that some local elections can be compromised - although I would say it is much more difficult now that it was say in 1950, prior to the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act. Some areas of the country (Chicago and Lousianna, to name 2) have a sordid history when it comes to local politics.

That said, interfering with a national election is a different ballgame.

Also, simply because someone advocated a position does not mean he encouraged illegal activity - any more than Trump advocating for a return to waterboard torture is a war crime. People, even mayors, can express an opinion and even advocate for that opinion. But did any illegals actually vote in that mayoral election? Is there any evidence that the mayor in question tried to aid any illegal immigrants to vote illegally? These are the questions that need to be asked.

I may not be making myself clear: My point was that, like the video with President Obama talking to the young woman, that what the mayor said got twisted. Trying to allow residents to vote on local politics is a far cry from allowing them to vote in national elections. I would go so far and not call it "compromised" because I think that undocumented workers who are residents in a given town are contributing to the town by working hard, paying local taxes - mostly in the form of sales taxes - and contributing to the town's way of life. I think that allowing them to vote in local elections would make them better residents (more willing to do things for the good of the town) and I think that they would deserve it just as much as someone lucky enough to be born in the US who moves to that town.

So I was not saying the mayor encouraged illegal activity - he wanted to allow people to vote in local elections (make something legal) but that doesn't mean that he was encouraging people to vote WITHOUT it being made legal.

I disagree that your questions are the questions that should be asked. I would ask: How can people be such bad readers that they miss the word local when reading that article, and get so angry that they pass it along to others who either also can't read, or don't bother to read and just believe whatever they're told. And then how people use evidence of ONE mayor advocating letting undocumented RESIDENTS vote in LOCAL elections and use that as possible proof that 3 million undocumented workers in CA voted in NATIONAL elections when these two are completely unrelated. I think that the problem is not just believing everything one reads/is told, but critical reasoning. Both in the area of critiquing the reasoning of others (not just disbelieving them because blah), and also in inductive reasoning: If A-> B that doesn't prove some unrelated C.

I showed the link to say that it wasn't completely made up, but twisted and misunderstood (or misrepresented), not in support of that ludicrous claim.

[MrAce]

Someone can sell me that racism D.T showed was due to getting the racist based votes. It sounds logical and I may even understand that despite finding it unacceptable. But what irritated me more was something else.


I have seen republicans who talk about gay marriage and consider it as an insult to marriage but approved a man who said...

Quote

I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything." - Donald Trump

Republicans who think Mexicans and blacks are rapists but approved a man who said...

Quote

"I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

Look...I understand there are cultural differences between nations. If you do what D.Trump said in USA, you probably get away with couple months of jail time, if any. You do that in an other country, they do at least one the things, if not all, I will list. Before they kill you, they kill your kids, they kill your parents, they kill your spouse, and then they kill you and cut your *****. When your body is found missing the genital, they know why you were killed and why your family blood line was cut from earth for good. Too harsh? It depends on how you look at it. It is harsh on one family I agree. But one can argue that it protects more innocent in the long run and overall it is less harsh than the so called civilized methods.

Having said that, back to the subject, I can understand you can be the type of person who has no problem with your wife or daughter being grabbed by the pussy, moved on her like a bitch, and let the guy get away with it just because he is a star. That is about your life and yourself and not my business. It just tells me what kind of man you are, even if we agreed to call you a man. But voting for D.T, as a father and as a married man or as a man who has any respect to females, to family, you are worthless than one celled organism in human shape for me.

One thing common in both cultures I lived in, is that the people who try to hide behind conservative blanket are the most screwed up. This election proved my theory one more time. As I said here before, fanatic Islam people and republicans have A LOT in common. They are just coincidentally born in different countries. They all complain about the same thing. They all are nor smart enough to adopt to changes. One of them can not exist without the other one. D.T will give a big boost to the crumbling Islamic terror, which will give a big boost to D.T for 2nd term, while people with family values that are foreign to me and low IQ will come and keep on posting stupid pictures.

[kenberg]

 mikeh, on 2016-December-03, 22:37, said:

By far and away the largest single component of health care costs relates to efforts to preserve and extend the last months of life of a sick patient. The use of extraordinary measures, often spent on people with no or virtually no quality of life...sometimes on people with no consciousness at all....far dwarves giving free gender-reassignment to all who will flock to have it should it become almost free....all those millions and millions of unhappy people trapped in the body of the wrong gender.

As to gender re-assignment: Surely a moment of reflection would convince anyone that nobody undergoes gender re-assignment on a whim. For those who choose it. I have absolutely no problem with the ACA picking up the costs. I strongly favor treating it as we would treat any birth disorder.

Exactly when a young person, say an early teen or a pre-teen, should be considered old enough to make such a decision is something I am not prepared to say. I don't think the answer is obvious. But for those for whom it is right, then it should be treated as we would treat any medical necessity.

I also have a bit to say about the statistics on health care, but that's another post.

[kenberg]

 mikeh, on 2016-December-03, 22:37, said:

By far and away the largest single component of health care costs relates to efforts to preserve and extend the last months of life of a sick patient. The use of extraordinary measures, often spent on people with no or virtually no quality of life...sometimes on people with no consciousness at all....far dwarves giving free gender-reassignment to all who will flock to have it should it become almost free....all those millions and millions of unhappy people trapped in the body of the wrong gender.

Where do you get these notions?

Take a guess where the US ranks in average life expectancy in the world. With a system that is by far and away the most expensive in the world, where do you think it ranks as of 2016?

The good news is that it ranks ahead of Cuba (by one place) and Albania (by a handful).

It ranks 31st.

Canada, with our horrible single payer nationalized system, and huge waiting lists for elective surgery, ranks 12th and Canadians live, on average, 3 years longer than Americans.

In terms of the top 35 or so countries by economic standards, the US has the 5th worst infant mortality rate.

Somehow I don't see gender reassignment surgery as the main reason.

You Americans spend hundreds of thousands per patient keeping terminally ill wealthy or well-insured patients alive for an extra month or two, while denying reasonable preventative care to tens of millions of poor people, in a society in which socio-economic mobility is virtually non-existent, and Republicans are poised to cut healthcare for the poor even more.

And you are worried about transgender people getting surgery.

Btw, do you know how long it took to find these facts, compiled by the UN? 60 seconds....it took that long because I googled firstly life expectancy and secondly infant mortality.

Getting facts isn't that difficult, you know.

A bit about how I see statistics. As mentioned, it is easy enough to find data.
From https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC3222401/

Quote

Objectives. The United States has the highest prevalence of obesity and one of the lowest life expectancies among high-income countries. We investigated the relationship between these 2 phenomena.

Methods. We estimated the fraction of deaths attributable to obesity by country, age, and sex and reestimated life tables after removing these deaths. To allow for a possible secular decline in obesity risks, we employed alternative risks from a more recent period.

Results. In our baseline analysis, obesity reduced US life expectancy at age 50 years in 2006 by 1.54 years (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.37, 1.93) for women and by 1.85 years (95% CI = 1.62, 2.10) for men. Removing the effects of obesity reduced the US shortfall by 42% (95% CI = 36, 48) for women and 67% (95% CI = 57, 76) for men, relative to countries with higher life expectancies. Using more recently recorded risk data, we estimated that differences in obesity still accounted for a fifth to a third of the shortfall.

Conclusions. The high prevalence of obesity in the United States contributes substantially to its poor international ranking in longevity.

That's statistics, now I will personalize it a little. I qualify as obese. I am also still in decent health for someone about to turn 78. For example, it takes me a little over an hour to do a four mile walk. For my good health, I thank good genes. For my obesity, I attribute it to bad decisions.


My point is that we cannot judge the quality of our health care system simply be citing longevity statistics. If people behave stupidly, it's hard to keep the consequences at bay. If I die before my genetic destiny suggests that I should, I think that it will have far more to do with bad choices I have made than with any problem with the medical system. For example I used to box (among friends, not in any particularly competitive way). I used to get headaches sometimes after I boxed. After I got a headache that lasted for weeks I stopped boxing. Now I am older. After I had a TIA (mini-stroke) a few years ago the MRIs found some brain abnormalities. Uh huh. Probably a coincidence. But I think about it.


Just speaking of my own experience, I have no complaints with our medical system. Of course some doctors are better than others. That will always be true, and it will be true of any profession. But if I want to live longer there are some sensible things I could do to promote it, and revamping the medical system is not one that I feel is needed. .A key feature for me is that if I decide the doctor I have is not the doctor I want, I just move on. In college, health care was free but we were assigned to a doctor. I did not like that at all

[y66]

From The Real Trump by Mark Danner in NYRB:

Quote

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. —Federalist 10

Now the high-flying song and dance man, of manic energy and ravenous narcissism and colossal neediness, will take the oath as our forty-fifth president. The lobbyists are gathering, the would-be courtiers, the place-servers, for his campaign was a ragged pickup team, a tenth the size of Clinton’s, and he was spurned by much of the Republican establishment that would normally stand eager to staff the government—though some of them now are showing themselves eager enough to join. The grasping after emoluments is a great story, Washington in the dawning of the Trump Age a picaresque novel in the making. Even as we watch, political outsiders are rushing in from the wilderness, eager to turn his fantasies, from immigration to trade to national security, into reality, a reality in which swastikas and hate crimes are popping up around the country, and local politicians are talking darkly of “sanctuary cities.”

And yet in a real sense the principal story worth telling is still him. We are now all in the prey of that aberrant personality, of that vast and never-to-be satisfied need. “Everywhere Donald Trump turns, he sees Donald Trump,” said Mark Singer, as quoted by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher in Trump Revealed.

He doesn’t see the other guy much. It becomes really hard to distinguish [how much] of the promotion and publicity…is good for business and how much of it is to fill that hollowness inside of him.

Now filling that hollowness is our job. No surprise that the president-elect, faced with selecting four thousand reasonably qualified people to fill the government and developing a policy or two that stands a chance of being enacted, has talked about undertaking a “victory tour,” revisiting the states he won, once again surfing those screaming crowds that plainly offer him the real-time affirmation he craves.

When he returns he will have the choice of facing the contradictions he has littered like breadcrumbs behind him. A promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants while building a “beautiful and impenetrable wall” to keep them out of the country. A vow to bring back the factories and industrial jobs by dismantling trade agreements long since become settled law. A promise to deliver great health care at a fraction of the cost of Obamacare. A threat to “bomb the *****” out of the Islamic State and reinstitute waterboarding and kill the families of terrorists. A pledge to cut taxes by $6 trillion even while spending trillions more rebuilding the country’s roads and bridges and airports, and “rebuilding our military”—while also eliminating the deficit and reducing the national debt.

He is a builder, Donald Trump, or anyway he used to be, before he became a reality television star and a manager of his brand. (“I’m very good at this,” he told Leslie Stahl on Sixty Minutes. “It’s called construction.”) To put people to work across the country pouring cement in his name, rebuilding the country under the grandeur of Trump, may well be his redemption, supplying at least some jobs to the working people who long for a leader who “finally will do something for us.” The program will spotlight his ideological obtuseness, for can he rebuild the country’s roads and bridges, can he build his bright new airports, while also delivering trillions of dollars in tax cuts to well-to-do Americans? Congressional Republicans, for whom the tax cuts count more than anything else, will insist on making compensating cuts in spending. These cannot be found without eviscerating the programs, including Medicare and Social Security, that Trump the populist has vowed to protect. The contradiction is stark and it lies squarely in the distance Trump defined from Republican Party orthodoxy at every rally he held.7 If he is really for working men and women, he will be forced to prove it and to do it very early on.

By such decisions will he define himself. He sees himself as the artist of the deal but he has shown he rarely takes opposition as legitimate, having learned his politics at the knee of Roy Cohn, the exemplar of the “go to hell” philosophy—if they screw you, screw them twenty times harder—and the master of the politics of personal destruction. Trump’s assumption of the mantle of the birther movement, which marked his self-creation as a politician, was pure Cohn, as were the stunningly brutal personal attacks on the Clintons: She lies and she lies and she lies again.

His blithe lack of respect for speaking the truth, his indifference to the strictures of the public record, are unprecedented in an American president and can find their parallels only in European leaders of the 1930s. In this as in other matters, there is no reason to expect a wholesale transformation when candidate Trump becomes President Trump. After all—in that ringing affirmation that he must hear echoing always in his ears—he won. Everyone told him he was destroying himself with feuds and attacks and angry tweets and in the end he won. Why would he change, even if he could?

What will change will be his power. He inherits a presidency that has been vastly inflated by the war on terror policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It is not the least of ironies that Trump will have vast powers because his predecessor has chosen not to restrict but to normalize the powers cultivated by the “wartime president” who preceded him.8 Donald Trump will inherit a government on a permanent wartime footing, actively fighting in six countries (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan), using means both public and secret—including drone strikes and attacks by covert special forces—and doing so with the benefit of never-ending war powers granted by Congress. He will have all the powers conferred by permanent war, by a greatly expanded CIA and NSA, and by a national security establishment that since 2001 has nearly doubled in size and has long since escaped the gaze of democratic scrutiny.

When he speaks, especially in the face of opposition, he will not be shy to remind the citizens that it is their commander in chief who is speaking. One can imagine those reminders coming fast and loud should there be, for example, the terrorist attacks from which he, the strongman, the law and order candidate, has vowed to safeguard the country. Or even in the face of huge demonstrations that might follow the shooting of a citizen of color, or a series of them, by police.

Donald Trump has been the shatterer of norms. Thus far it has been enough. Will he become the breaker of laws? Will he find it necessary? Scarcely a decade and a half ago George W. Bush, when he determined that the country’s interest demanded that he torture prisoners, simply found a way to have his government declare legal what was not. It may well be that Trump will do the same. At his rollicking rallies across the country, he has made vows to hundreds of thousands of screaming supporters, and now the eager courtiers are gathering, including figures like Bannon and Flynn and Sessions, among others long regarded as extreme, to put his words into policy and law.

We will see how that goes. It seems predictable, though, that as Trump encounters opposition, as he proves unable to fulfill the grandeur of his promises, he will strike back—it is his nature—and we will see American institutions tested. If they prove strong, there are ways for Trump to circumvent them. The enormous rallies offer one way. The cries of “Traitor!” give sign of another way. Trump is an improviser, a performer, a creator of new worlds. The narcissistically damaged actor, the high-flying song and dance man: even he can scarcely know what is to come.

[Kaitlyn S]

 MrAce, on 2016-December-04, 04:16, said:

...They all are nor smart enough to adopt to changes...

I can't help but think that many of the people writing about "Trump voters" are talking to me, even if they are not. I want to make one thing perfectly clear, in case I hadn't already done so.

I've gone on record many times, in another forum if not here, that I expect Trump to be a disaster. (He was my 17th choice in the primaries.) I hope that he will do good for the country, or that the country will do okay in spite of him, but I don't expect it. And yet I voted for him anyway.

Why? Because I was convinced (and still am) that the country will have done worse under Hillary. I'm sure that in four years when things have gone to hell in a hand basket people will come to me and say "See, you voted for him and look at what we got." And yet, I may have been 100% right; things may have been worse under Hillary and yet I'll be lumped in with all the "stupid, racist, uninformed, unable to fathom change" Trump voters. We will never know though. We don't get to see it both ways, but I saw the election as "heads I lose, tails I really lose."

A lot of your post was based on character. If that were the only reason for making the decision, I would have still voted for Trump. Yes, his character is awful, but IMO still better than Hillary's.