Thanks, gocomics.org
Tag: Republican
Aetna CEO wants public discussion of single-payer healthcare coverage
❝ The chief executive of one of the country’s largest health insurance companies says he is open to having a single-payer debate….“Single-payer, I think we should have that debate as a nation,” Aetna chief executive Mark Bertolini said…
❝ Bertolini spoke to a private meeting where Aetna employees could ask questions of their chief executive. A partial video of his remarks provided to Vox includes Bertolini responding to a question about single-payer health care.
“In the news media, it is reporting that the Republican health plan is paving the way to a single-payer system,” an Aetna employee asks Bertolini. “What are your thoughts on that, and how would it impact Aetna?”
This was his response:
❝ Single-payer, I think we should have that debate as a nation. But let me remind everybody that Aetna was the first financial intermediary for Medicare. We cut the first check for Medicare in 1965 to Hartford Hospital for $517.57.
❝ The government doesn’t administer anything. the first thing they’ve ever tried to administer in social programs was the ACA, and that didn’t go so well. So the industry has always been the back room for government. If the government wants to pay all the bills, and employers want to stop offering coverage, and we can be there in a public private partnership to do the work we do today with Medicare, and with Medicaid at every state level, we run the Medicaid programs for them, then let’s have that conversation.
But if we want to turn it all over to the government to run, is the government really the right place to run all this stuff? And that’s the debate that needs to be had. They could finance it, and if there is one financer, and you could call that single-payer. …
I think it’s hilarious that he ignores federal administration of SSA and Medicare. Both of which have administration costs less than 10-25% of typical American private insurance companies.
❝ What Bertolini seems open to is a version of single-payer where the federal government would contract out certain functions private companies, such as Aetna. These insurers would, in his own words, become a “back room for government.”
Fixing healthcare GOP-style
Thanks, gocomics.org
An Apple answer to Republican snobs and affordable healthcare
Conan O’Brien’s witty response to Congressional creeps like Jason Chaffetz – who says low income Americans just need to spend their spare change on healthcare instead of new iPhones. Yes, Republicans still consider decent healthcare a class privilege, not a right.
A Republican solution for Potholes? Go Back to Gravel Roads
One of those roads turned to gravel – and more potholes
❝ After living more than 40 years along a road plagued by potholes, Jo Anne Amoura was excited to see city crews shred her block of Leavenworth Street into gravel.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great. We’re going to get a new street,’” Ms. Amoura recalled. “And then we waited and waited and waited.”
Fresh pavement never arrived. Only after the asphalt had been ripped out almost three years ago did Ms. Amoura and her neighbors learn that their street had been “reclaimed,” Omaha City Hall’s euphemism for unpaving a road…
❝ As in many big cities, the infrastructure here is crumbling, a problem exacerbated by decades of neglect and a network of residential roads, including Ms. Amoura’s, that have never met code. But Omaha’s solution is extreme: grinding paved streets into gravel as a way to cut upkeep costs…
❝ While President Trump has called for extensive investments in infrastructure, federally funded efforts are likely to go to decaying interstate highways and airports and dams. Some experts estimate that $1 trillion is needed to repair roads, bridges and rail lines over the next decade.
But infrastructure is also decaying at the most local levels — on cul-de-sacs and in neighborhood playlots unlikely ever to see federal funding. So cities like Omaha have resorted to unusual solutions…
“This isn’t something that happened over one year or two years,” said Brooks Rainwater, a senior executive and the director of the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities. “This has been decades of not investing in our infrastructure.”
Thing is, taxpayers have been paying their taxes. The ordinary citizens who have been living and working in America’s cities for generations. Politicians keep trying to attract industry by NOT collecting taxes from the new guys at the top of the scale. Maybe promising lower taxes for their executive class, as well.
Yes, it’s not just a Republican problem at the front end. Both clubhouses in our incompetent 2-party private political association are less than understanding of economics beyond slogans. But, the right-hand side of that 2-party equation ain’t about to begin supporting legislation and regulations that fill life’s needs for folks who work for a living. That’s reserved for the important people.
RTFA for the details, folks. It ain’t a surprise, anywhere in the GOUSA.
Conservative Libertarian hedge funder pockets $35 million state aid package
Chris Goodney/Bloomberg
Cliff Asness, the founder of AQR Capital Management, is a hard-core libertarian who opposes big government…In 2010, he described the administration’s economic team as “Cossacks on a shtetl.” In 2015, he took to the august pages of The Wall Street Journal to moan about Obamacare, and the same year claimed that global warming isn’t the big deal some people make it out to be. In 2012, he made a cameo in a documentary called Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, and argued that the blame for the financial crisis rested squarely on “all-intrusive” government policies…
…You might think that, when approached by the state of Connecticut, where his firm is headquartered, about accepting a $35 million aid package he would say, “Thanks, but we‘re good. Accepting the money would violate the principles I hold near and dear. Honestly, I wouldn‘t be able to sleep at night if I took the money.” But you would be wrong…
…The assistance for…AQR, which has $172 billion in assets under management, has been questioned by some, including the state comptroller, over whether the initiative actually benefits jobs in the state.
In America, Asness once more verified you can take hypocrisy to the bank.
Republicans turn out to vote — their neighbors will know the truth
Click to enlarge
We will tell your neighbors, your employer, your friends. Are you a loyal Republican?
We’re watching.
Paul Ryan’s tax plan ends up giving 100% of Its benefits to the top 1%
File this one under “too good to check.” Max Ehrenfreund passes along the latest analysis of Paul Ryan’s tax proposal from the Tax Policy Center and notes that by 2025 it gets a wee bit lopsided:
This is like a parody of Republican tax proposals. In its first year, the top 1 percent start off getting a mere 76 percent of the benefit….Within ten years they get nearly 100 percent of the benefit. Ryan and the congressional Republicans manage this by giving the poor and middle class nothing and actually taking money away from the upper middle class. The only people who benefit are the rich and the really rich.
As for the really, really rich, the top 0.1 percent get an average tax break of $1.4 million, while the rest of us get about $3 trillion in extra federal debt and no long-term change in economic growth. What a deal.
More craptastic politics from the least productive hacks in Washington, DC. I honestly think Ryan trots his spreadsheet out with a new set of lies every couple of years just so Congressional Republlicans can say, “look, we have a proposal!” – even though it’s about as useful as a new crutch to someone who just had his legs amputated.
