#it seems people just get sicker the more entrenched they become in mental health politics u know

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The Russians have an expression: words are deeds. Indeed, words contain a mesmeric power, and while this power can be used for good, it can also be used to harness dark and pernicious forces. For as Orwell understood all too well, words can be hijacked by a corrupt ruling class and used to indoctrinate, manipulate, and deceive. In order to understand how the liberal class has come to be so beguiled by the forces of reaction, one must take note of the unprecedented liberal hysteria over racism, sexism, and homophobia. Indeed, the more liberals remain transfixed with this unholy trinity, the more indifferent they become to the terrible suffering inflicted by capitalism, as they are drawn further and further to the right, and pulled ever more deeply into a vortex of amorality. This is not to suggest that racism, sexism, and homophobia do not exist, but rather, that these words have been co-opted by a ruling establishment which has succeeded in duping the faux-left into embracing policies that are deeply antithetical to the interests of American workers, patients, and students. In politics either one believes in unions, single-payer, and public education or one doesn’t. Either one opposes imperialism, or one does not. The problem with anchoring a political discourse around who opposes racism, sexism, and homophobia and who (allegedly) doesn’t, is that these words are inherently ambiguous to the point where they can be manipulated to mean almost anything. All too often, the racists, sexists, and homophobes can simply comprise anybody who has the temerity to challenge liberal orthodoxy. In an article in U.S. News and World Report titled “The Problem with Hillary-Hate,” Joanne Cronrath Bamberger bemoans the criticism of her hero, arguing that, “Pundits and journalists alike continually refer to her as corrupt and untrustworthy, even though the things people point to for support either are false or they can’t say why they use those words because, well, it’s just a feeling they have”. “We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary famously blurted out when asked about the brutal murder of Gaddafi. While this may never be mentioned on CNN, Libya was a country that had a high standard of living, and had attained a sound nationalization of its health care and education systems. Gaddafi infuriated the Western elites by attempting to establish a gold-backed dinar, leading NATO to unleash a barrage of merciless savagery and violence on a country that is now in a state of complete and utter lawlessness, yet this fails to elicit even so much as a shrug from the sanctimonious imaginary left. For these acts of barbarity pale in the decaying liberal mind with an accusation of sexism. Bamberger continues: Disagree with her policies all you want. Propose different plans that are better. But continuing hate-based commentary about Clinton implicitly says to us all that it will also be acceptable to throw the next woman presidential candidate – viable or not – under the bus with detestable accusations and made-up charges. To let that kind of hateful disrespect for any woman continue allows it to become our cultural norm. This lamentable mentality is illustrative of how the sexism card can be used to stifle criticism – not only of an extremely corrupt politician – but of foreign policies that are nothing short of genocidal. In an equally inane article in the HuffPost by Maya Dusenbery, titled “Medicine has a Sexism Problem, and it’s Making Women Sicker,” the author (who has rheumatoid arthritis and a female rheumatologist), writes: While I’ve been a feminist writer for years, before I got sick, I hadn’t given much thought to how sex and gender bias has skewed what we know and don’t know about health and disease and how it affects the quality of medical care that patients receive. But after my brush with the autoimmune epidemic – an epidemic that seemed strangely off the radar of both the public and the medical system – I started to explore it. What I’ve discovered is that a lack of knowledge about women’s health, and a lack of trust in their reports of their symptoms – entwined problems that have become remarkably entrenched in the American medical system – conspire to leave many women misdiagnosed, dismissed and sick. Hospital errors are the third leading cause of death in this country, and thousands of Americans continue to file for bankruptcy due to medical bills they cannot pay, while little Cuba has had constitutionally mandated single-payer since 1959, yet these are mere trivialities. The real problem with our health care system is that it is sexist. If sexism is the son, racism is the father, and no one loves talking about racism more than liberals. Regrettably, they know nothing whatsoever about it. Last April, Milo Yiannopoulos was driven out of a New York bar by a pack of vituperative liberals who repeatedly yelled “Nazi scum get out.” That Milo is a flamboyant homosexual, married to a black man, and has a Jewish maternal grandmother surely makes him the strangest Nazi that ever lived. Whether one agrees with what he says or not, is neither here nor there. The point is that it is simply far too common for anyone who disagrees with fundamentalist liberal dogma to be beaten with the truncheons of racism and sexism. That the real Nazis are in Kiev, and that they violently seized power in a coup which was wholeheartedly backed by the Obama administration is, to quote John Pilger, beyond irony. In an article in The Washington Post titled “The Racist Backlash Obama Has Faced During His Presidency,” by Terence Samuel, the author writes, “From the very beginning, Obama’s ascendance produced a huge backlash that was undeniably racist in nature….” This was an administration that destroyed Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, supported death squads in Syria that led to the destruction of over half the country, slaughtered thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, passed the National Defense Authorization Act, set aside a trillion dollars to modernize our nuclear weapons arsenal and brought relations with Moscow to their nadir. Moreover, these genocidal polices were paid for with trillions of dollars, while a vast swath of American society is either uneducated, unemployed, or without decent health insurance. Yet these acts of brazen criminality and barbarity are incidental. So let’s ignore the content of Obama’s character, and just talk about the color of his skin. At a lecture at Trinity College Dublin in June, Hillary said, “Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as the leader of an authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement….” What is striking about these remarks is that much of Hillary’s presidential campaign was anchored in Russophobia – undeniably one of the most dangerous forms of racism – and which contributed to an ideology that led to the murder of twenty-seven million Russians during the Second World War. Liberals wield an extraordinary amount of power in the public schools, and regard themselves as valiant crusaders against racism. Yet while they repeatedly and vociferously maintain that the ethnic studies programs and the multicultural curriculum are the antithesis of racism, they are actually the quintessence of it. For these policies have fomented an unprecedented degree of segregation in our schools and in our society. Indeed, virtually any attempt at elevating the level of education for poor students of color – especially in the humanities – will invariably land a public school teacher in the doghouse with a liberal administrator. In this schizophrenic order that would make Orwell blush, the real racists are now holier-than-thou anti-racists. Accusations of homophobia have also become quite useful when it comes to duping insouciant liberals into embracing reactionary policies. In an article in The Guardian titled “Iranian Human Rights Official Describes Homosexuality as an Illness,” the author bemoans the fact that, “An Iranian official whose job is to protect human rights has described homosexuality as an illness, after a UN special rapporteur expressed concerns about the systematic persecution of Iran’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.” What a pity that the editors of a once respectable newspaper are happy to print anti-Iranian propaganda, so as to foment liberal bloodlust for yet another regime change. The author also fails to question why one of Washington’s best friends in the Middle East, the Saudi monarchy, a regime that delights in decapitating people as punishment for “sorcery and witchcraft,” is permitted to impose a theocracy infinitely more reactionary and medieval than the one in Iran, and can do so without even the faintest trace of rebuke from the Western media. And what of the Washington-backed jihadi death squads in Syria and Libya? What is their record on gay rights? Indeed, the same question could be raised regarding the rights of women living under the yoke of these barbarians. But they are “the good terrorists,” and so all is forgiven. In an article in The Guardian by Peter Tatchell, titled “World Cup Fever, Gay Rights Abuses and War Crimes – It’s an Ugly Mix,” the author writes, “I’m here for the World Cup – but unlike thousands of fans, I won’t be cheering on this festival of football. LGBT+ people and many other Russians suffer state-sanctioned persecution and far-right violence. These abuses need to be challenged.” The decision of Washington to unleash Neo-Nazi and other far-right paramilitaries on the Donbass that have murdered thousands of ethnic Russians, Moscow’s military intervention in Syria that saved the country from the fate of Libya, and the fact that Russians enjoy free health care and superior education, are of no interest to Western propagandists. Russians are simply terrible people, and what better way to get liberals to embrace Russophobia (not to mention the annihilation of the planet), than to talk about the country’s lack of gay rights? This is not to say that identity politics and multiculturalism have been a failure. On the contrary, they have been a resounding success. However, contrary to fundamentalist liberal dogma this success lies not unto the heart of the left, but under the iron heel of the right. Increasingly, those who have been indoctrinated to view the world through the warped prism of identity politics are incapable of seeing political reality for what it is, but for what the ruling establishment desires it to be. For they have been enshrouded in a veil of blindness. That liberals have severed all ties with The Civil Rights Movement, unions, intellectual inquiry, and anti-imperialist sentiment is incontrovertible. The ongoing fervor and cultlike zealotry over racism, sexism, and homophobia has ushered in a new era of witch-hunts, and is indicative of a liberal class that is increasingly unmoored and unhinged. The psychosis of contemporary liberalism has defiled and contaminated our very language, and caused the national discourse to be paralyzed by a deranged political philosophy that has fomented a war of all against all, while allowing the elite to use liberals as attack dogs to vilify, intimidate, and silence all who oppose the machinations of capitalist power both at home and abroad http://clubof.info/

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New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/the-gop-health-care-plan-just-wont-work/

The GOP Health Care Plan Just Won’t Work

They rarely agree on much, but health care experts on the left, right and center of the political spectrum have found consensus on the House GOP’s Obamacare replacement: It won’t work.

While their objections vary depending on their ideological goals, the newly introduced American Health Care Act (AHCA) is facing an unrelenting wave of criticism. Some experts warn that the bill is flawed in ways that could unravel the individual insurance market.

The bill, experts said, falls far short of the goals President Donald Trump laid out: Affordable coverage for everyone; lower deductibles and health care costs; better care; and zero cuts to Medicaid. Instead, the bill is almost certain to reduce overall coverage, result in deductibles increasing, and will phase out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Several health care policy wonks cautioned that they’re waiting to see a report by the Congressional Budget Office, which is analyzing the bill to determine how many people would gain or lose coverage and how much it would cost. But here are the main objections.

Fewer people will be insured

Let’s start with the primary objection from the center and left: It’s very likely people will lose insurance coverage if the GOP plan became law, taking full effect in 2020. Possibly a lot of people.

Like any health care bill, including the current system, there are winners and losers within this shift. In general, younger and higher-income people looking for insurance on the individual market are poised to gain. Older, sicker and lower-income patients are the bigger losers.

For one, tax credits to help people buy health insurance in the individual market are less generous than the Affordable Care Act for some of the most vulnerable Americans. Under the ACA, these credits are based on a person’s income and pegged to the cost of plans where the individual lives. Under the House bill, they are based on age and fixed. The bill also removes ACA subsidies that allow some lower-income customers to pay fewer out-of-pocket costs through their plan.

On the other hand, the House’s tax credits are accessible at higher incomes than the ACA’s: In the House bill, it’s up $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a family in the House bill. In the ACA, it’s 400% of the federal poverty level in the ACA, which is $47,520 for an individual and varies based on family size.

If you’re a 40-year-old making $50,000 you might benefit from the House plan. Under Obamacare, you get nothing to help pay your premium, but you would get $3,000 under the House bill.

And if you’re wealthy, you’re in luck.

The House bill uses the savings from spending less on health coverage to eliminate taxes that pay for Obamacare: About $600 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Close to half of that revenue comes from surtaxes on high-income Americans. They’re also more likely to benefit from an increased tax deduction on health savings accounts.

“The repeal bill will transfer money from low-income and middle-class Americans to millionaires,” the liberal Center for American Progress put it in an analysis by Topher Spiro and Harry Stein.

But most people in the individual insurance market are on the lower end of the income range: 81% received some subsidies in the most recent enrollment period, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And a lot of them would see major increases in their effective premium costs.

“The flat credit will price many poor and vulnerable people out of the health insurance market,” Avik Roy, a Republican health adviser, wrote in a scathing review of the House GOP plan.

If you’re an older enrollee under the House bill, you get more generous benefits than a younger enrollee: up to $4,000. But costs are going up too. Under Obamacare, insurers can only charge older customers up to 3 times as much as younger ones. But under the House bill, they can charge up to five times as much.

More from NBC News: Republicans unveil Obamacare replacement bill that would scrap individual mandate GOP leaders push health care bill amid rank-and-file opposition GOP health care bill would cut CDC fund to fight killer diseases

Geography is another problem. The House GOP bill’s tax credits are the same everywhere, but premium costs vary wildly depending on where you live. In Alaska, the most expensive state, the gap would become massive: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 60 year olds in some counties are now eligible for over $25,000 in subsidies annually, far more than the $4,000 offered under the House bill.

“Some parts of the country will see very large financial hits even if they retain coverage,” Matthew Fiedler, a fellow at the Center for Health Policy at Brookings, told NBC News.

Perhaps most importantly, the bill radically reforms Medicaid and phases out the ACA’s expansion of the program by 2020, which covered over 11 million people, according to the Kaiser, while grandfathering in some existing recipients. The Republican plan would transform Medicaid so that the government would pay states a fixed amount for each person enrolled rather than an open-ended commitment. These changes could potentially force states to offer less far-reaching programs over time.

Put it together and Fiedler believes 15 million or more could potentially lose coverage. On Tuesday, S&P Global Ratings estimated 6 to 10 million people would lose health coverage once the full House proposal went into effect.

It doesn’t go after high costs Republicans have long argued that the goal of a replacement should be to reduce the cost of insurance and health care procedures rather than simply hand money over to individuals to buy it.

But experts complain that the GOP plan leaves out the most prominent proposals (especially among conservatives) that might drive costs down. And some of its features could potentially drive prices higher.

One big missing piece is that the bill does not eliminate Obamacare’s “Essential Health Benefits,” a list of 10 broad categories, like mental health or maternity care, that insurance plans were required to cover.

Proponents of the benefits argue they’re needed to keep insurers from cherry picking healthy customers into cheaper low-benefit plans. Critics complain they raise premiums by giving insurers less flexibility to design plans and forcing consumers to buy more comprehensive plans than they need.

The earlier leaked draft of the House GOP plan would have left it to states to decide, but the bill that was introduced left out that provision. It may be for procedural reasons: Certain regulations can’t pass through the budget process Republicans are using to pass their health care bill.

The House GOP bill also balked at an earlier plan to reduce the tax deduction businesses get for providing health care. It was a politically perilous idea, but many policy experts supported the proposal, saying it would help drive down health-care costs and raise wages by reducing the incentive to offer more generous plans.

“This bill misses the mark primarily because it fails to correct the features of Obamacare that drove up health care costs,” Edmund F. Haislmaier, an expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation who advised Trump’s transition team, wrote on Tuesday.

The plan also leaves out Trump’s proposal, backed by many on the left, to empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. The president tweeted on Tuesday he plans to address it in a future bill.

And there’s serious concern about the House GOP plan to replace Obamacare’s penalty for not purchasing insurance with a one-year 30% markup on premiums for people whose coverage lapses. Some experts are worried that’s too weak to attract younger people with low premiums, and will drive up premiums as a result.

“It’s not enough of a penalty for healthy people and sick people will have no choice but to pay it,” Aaron Carroll, a professor at Indiana University School of Medicine, told NBC News. “It will create adverse selection.”

It’s too much like Obamacare On the right, there’s a more specific concerns.The plan still retains the basic structure of the ACA, even as its benefits are less generous: Federal dollars to buy insurance, regulations on what that insurance provides, and a requirement that insurers take on customers with pre-existing conditions. Some have labeled it “Obamacare-lite” or “Obamacare 2.0.”

“House Republican leaders sent a signal loud and clear: liberalism has already won,” Phil Klein, a conservative commentator at the Washington Examiner, wrote.

While moderate Republicans and liberals fret that the Medicaid changes will leave people in the cold, conservatives worry that the bill will encourage states to sign up as many new participants as possible before the expansion ends, who then will be grandfathered in afterwards. It also punts its changes to the ACA’s tax credits to 2020, when the political environment will be anyone’s guess and there could be opportunities to delay or cancel the reforms.

Given these constraints, many conservative groups are urging Republicans to repeal Obamacare entirely before tackling a replacement in order to avoid entrenching a framework that Democrats could build back up in the future.

But that would create plenty of its own pitfalls: The CBO found a previous House bill to repeal Obamacare would have resulted in 18 million people losing coverage in the first year. For now, Republicans seem trapped behind a plan that worries conservatives and moderates while exciting neither and drawing opprobrium from experts of all stripes.