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July 01, 2012 12:20 AM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 64 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Pols was down for several hours today because the power outages on the East Coast affected our servers. Things may be a bit buggy this weekend as a result.

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64 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

  3. Today’s coverage in the  Denver Post of the Koch Brother’s sponsored rally contained the sad story of Jon Caldara’s children — for which I have only the deepest sympathies:

    Caldara recounted to the crowd how he lost a daughter to brain cancer and has a son with Down syndrome who has had 10 surgeries in his eight years of life.

    But then he goes on to make the most egregiously false accusation I’ve ever heard:

    “If this law stands, I will lose another child,” he said. “Quite simply, I can’t live through that again.”

    How do you figure this law will do that, Jon?  

    Because of the unlimited lifetime coverage?

    Because you can’t be denied coverage?

    Because you can now choose among a variety of plans?

    Because the insurance companies now must spend at least 80% on care vs. bigger bonuses for their execs?

    Because you still have the same doctors available to care for your child?

    Assuming you have coverage, then nothing changes.  If you’ve lost your coverage because of your child’s pre-exisiting condition, or you have hit your plan’s limits of coverage, how will this law not benefit your family?

    And of course, the GOP’s position makes absolutely no sense from a business standpoint:

    The World Health Organization gives the U.S. health system an overall ranking of 37th in the world, far below other Western democracies. The CIA World Factbook – hardly the work of a bunch of left-leaning one-worlders – reports that life expectancy in the United States is not just lower than in other industrialized countries but also lower than in Jordan and Bosnia.Infant mortality in this country, according to the CIA, exceeds that of Slovenia and Cuba. It is possible to quibble with these figures but not to ignore them. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

    Most working-age Americans who have health insurance obtained it through their employers. But this is a haphazard and inefficient delivery route that puts U.S. businesses at a disadvantage against foreign competitors, most of which shoulder no such burden. Tying health insurance to the workplace also distorts the labor market and discourages entrepreneurship by forcing some employees to stay where they are – even in dead-end jobs – rather than give up health insurance.

    Jon, if you must make a political point out of your personal family tragedy, at least don’t do so to further yet another falsehood masquerading as a GOP talking point.

    1. .

      “Because you still have the same doctors available to care for your child?”

      My family physician, who is also the city’s #1 specialist in a particular pediatric disorder, will quit due to the “quality” requirements in Obamacare, which effectively outlaws private practices, and requires sharing of medical records.  

      Your religious belief are muddling your thinking.

      .

      1. As one of the few who has actually read the bill, I can assure you that there is nothing in the bill that should worry any doctor – unless the doctor is a quack or a charlatan.  The, he may be one of those people – see pictures below of the Hands Off My Heathcare demonstration – who believes that the licensing of doctors is socialism.

        If you are accurately reporting his position, the medical profession and society in general would be better without him.

      3. I stand by my earlier statement. My doctor plans to keep practicing for a few more decades.  I suspect millions of other doctors will too.

        One ticked off doctor in Somalia Springs does not a socialist takeover make.

        1. I haven’t read the bill.  Not gonna, either.

          But there are “quality” requirements that effectively mandate group practices; no more stand-alone practices.  

          Call me whatever names you like, doesn’t change what’s in the law.  

          Your Doc, if he’s in a stand-alone practice, may retire before 2015, or go into some other line of work.  He may also join a group practice and continue in the healing arts.

          Dave Thi’s religious beliefs include his faith that the Obamacare law is all good.  

          Keep the faith, baby.  

          I have responded to all who deserve a response.

          .

          2. You mean like these:

            I believe the mandate is constitutional, but no matter how the court rules, many health care reforms that were approved by Congress through the Affordable Care Act and other recent bills – like those to promote electronic health records, encourage coordinated care, reduce medical errors and cut costs – will proceed.

            My doctor (who is terrific, btw) is in his early ’40’s, and finally in the last year automated his practice.  

            The last thing I want to do when entering a doctor’s office is to be handed a clipboard where I have to fill out my history for the Nth time, and then have some clerk mistype it into a computer.

            Sorry your doctor doesn’t want to keep up with best practices and provide better, safer medicine.  He probably should retire.  Mine isn’t, thank goodness.

            1. .

              My family doc was offered something like $40,000 to allow the federal government to convert all his patient records to electronic files.

              As part of the deal, he had to allow some bureaucrat at HHS access to those records.  

              My Doc declined.  Many of his peers accepted.  

              6 months from now, Harry, I’ll be able to buy a copy of your medical records online, complete with your personal identifying information.

              I can’t imagine why I would want to, but it will be available.  

              .

              1. Do you understand the aroma of bullshit?

                WHO is paying $40,000?  And WHY?  Whoa….to get YOUR oh so valuable medical records?  

                I have three experiences, directly and indirectly with computerized medical records. In the VA, any vet can show up at any VA hospital and poof! there are all his records so that doctors might proceed with best care.

                Ditto Kaiser Permanente within state boundaries.

                The local clinic that my mother and father have gone for some years spent a boodle on the computerized record system.  Any given specialist can pull up all the records, find out what drugs are being prescribed.

                What’s the problem?

                  1. …..or not, but that someone is paying $40K to look at them.  Not bloody likely.  

                    And the biggest reasons for medical privacy, besides those embarrassing penicillin shots, has been so that health insurance companies can either deny coverage or “justify” high premiums.

                    Now, not so much.  If at all.  

              2. Given what is available via credit checks, I’m not particularly concerned with what you might want with my medical information. HIPPA regs are still in place you know (more of a PITA than anything as far as I see).

                Mostly, as with ID theft, I wouldn’t want you getting treatments or prescriptions by impersonating me.

                But, there are safeguards for that sort of thing, as well as criminal penalties that can be pursued.

                But as Scott McNealy put it about a decade ago, “Privacy is dead, get over it”.  Since the insurance companies, who would be most interested in my pre-existing conditions no longer have an incentive to use that to cancel our policies or deny coverage, if my medical history is not 100% secure, so what?

  4. “ELEPHANT: The 12 Things I Learned When I Ran For Office” will be released this February!

    It is a memoir about my run for HD56 back in 2008 (and yes, I mention ColoradoPols). Hopefully there’s a book signing at the Tattered Cover or something (then again, they only invite ‘good’ authors… lol).

    Anyways – my bday week is off to a good start – hope you’re all having a great holiday week!

      1. Yes, the entire manuscript is done and I’m just putting some finishing touches on it now.

        Every chapter is a different lesson learned, all culminating into the end of the election. I’ll have to ask the publisher about “teasers” but I think I could probably put something online 🙂

        1. when we should start calling Tattered Cover to demand they book a promising new author all our friends want to meet.  

          And to ColPols…several hours? I couldn’t get on from early Saturday to last check before bed time. Of course that means no comments for the 30th.  Can’t wait to see how low I rank this past quarter on the frequent comment scale!

    4. congratulations.

      I’m still trying to get a couple more of your bumper stickers.  The Cutlass Ciera I plastered mine on went to the Bako with my younger son.  

      And a yard sign would be fantastic.  I’ll pay postage.

      Brian  

    5. You got the book deal, right?

      What if you then get someone else to research, plagiarize and other wise put words on a page for you, will your publisher be cool with that?

  7. Amber Waves of Green

    There’s something unusual about Nick. For a multimillionaire, he doesn’t have your average multimillionaire view. In fact, he’s come to believe that the system he benefits so richly from is built on nonsense-specifically, the idea that “the markets are perfectly efflcient and allocate benefits and burdens perfectly efflciently, based on talent and merit. So by that definition, the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor. We believe this because we have an almost insanely powerful need to self-justify.”

    And the biggest nonsense of all, he says, “is the idea that because the rich are the smartest, and because we’re the job creators, the richer we get, the better it is for everyone. So taxes on the rich should be very, very low because we’re essentially the center of the economic universe, the font of productivity.” Nick pauses. “If there were a shred of truth to the claim that the rich are our nation’s job creators, then given how rich the rich have gotten, America should be drowning in jobs!”

    “So if the rich don’t create the jobs,” I ask, “who does?”

    “The middle classes!” Nick roars. “A huge middle class will produce an unbelievable opportunity for capitalists.”

    …

    “The view that regulation is bad for business is almost universally held,” he says. “But in every country where you find prosperity, you find massive amounts of regulation. Show me a libertarian paradise where nobody pays any taxes and nobody follows rules and everybody lives like a king! Show me one!”

      1. Ads on COPols are provided by Google AdChoices, which targets you with different ads based on your Google search terms/results, so if ads for the CIA pop up, it’s likely that you have entered “CIA” in the search bar a lot in the past few weeks. Which is also why I get Diablo 3 ads whenever I come to Pols…

  9. Mobile Is Where The Growth Is

    In the past fifteen years, we have seen Microsoft go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many important new markets, we have seen Google go from being an unstoppable force to being a non-factor in many imporant new markets, and I suspect we are going to see Facebook struggle with the same thing. RIM is dying quickly now. Yahoo! is a question mark.

    In technology the more things change, the more the stay the same. You cannot ever rest. Because the big change that is going to upset your nice apple cart is right around the corner. Today that is mobile. Tomorrow, who knows? I am trying like hell to figure out what that will be and jump on it. Because that’s how you play this game.

    1. Saw an interview with the new CEO of the same recently.  After almost always hooking their OS star to Symbian variants, with a bit of LInux, they are now totally Windows Mobile.  One of their claims is that with more Windows PC’s than any other OS, and all of the gaming consoles, they are part of the biggest OS infrastructure out there.  

      Who knows, maybe the pendulum will swing back a bit.

      Full disclosure: I’m a user of Nokia Communicators since 2000.  My sole foray into a touch screen Android sent me back to the E90. No opinion about Windows mobile, although open minded reviews seem to be positive.

      1. The new Windows Mobile is really good. And Microsoft will clearly keep pumping money into mobile until they get the largest market share. I don’t think Nokia had a better option than to hitch a ride with Microsoft.

  10. “A second Obama term is the single greatest threat in history to our freedom and our Second Amendment rights,” LaPierre said.

    Not even in U.S. history, mind you, but all history ever!  WWII, no worries.  Slavery?  Didn’t affect the good folk that are the real Americans, I suppose, like Mr. Wingnut The Peter.  

    How can conservatives say this over-the-top BS and still have ANY credibility at all, anywhere (other than Glenn Beck et al)?  

      1. is the most absurd statement that has ever been uttered in all of human history, and likely before, all the way back to the Big Bang.

        A Mitt Romney term is the single greatest threat in history to our pets.

        If we elect Mitt Romney fire will rain down from the sky, large fissures will open up all across the Midwest, and all non-Saints will be swallowed whole into the fiery furnace.

        Oh, wait, I just made all that up.  Its easy to write great soundbites when no longer bound by the constraints of fact or reality.  

  11. From the guy that spelled out what the GOP would and has been focused on, singularly, since 2009–playing partisan politics at the expense of governing and the American people.

    “We’ve got one last chance here to beat Obamacare, and we can do that in the November election,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling the law the “single worst piece of legislation” passed in modern times.

    There was that whole Iraq war resolution under false pretenses…the PATRIOT Act…deregulation leading to the S&L bailout, the bank bailout, and the economy tanking…but, of course, the latest outrage is by far the ‘worse.’  

    PS-NPR, McConnell only dreams he is the Senate Majority Leader.  

    1. If all of our fine readers will recall, the Repubs ran in 2010 on a “JOBS” platform…as in they felt their #1 job was to bring down the unemployment rate.

      The mummified Senate Majority leader has “clarified”that position:


      The upper House’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News Sunday that his party will push the Senate to hold a ballot on the controversial healthcare reforms ahead of November’s presidential run-off.

      He added that if Republicans take the Senate in the national elections, “I commit to the American people that the repeal of ‘Obamacare’ will be job one.”

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

  12. The Orangeman lies:

    This is government taking over the entire health insurance industry.

    Say what?  Now, I am one that supports true universal healthcare and a public option.  But how is requiring citizens to enter a private market ‘government takeover’?  I assume that the Speaker is not really so stupid as to believe this, which leaves only one other option: that he is a bald-face liar.

    Why the hell isn’t the media challenging this crap?  Why even bother to pretend we have a ‘Fourth Estate’ any longer?  

    Not directly related, but relevant, good video by Gasland’s Josh Fox:

    http://vimeo.com/44367635

  13. From Scott Tipton’s Weekly Update:

    Denver Post Spot Blog: Colorado politicos react to Supreme Court ruling:  Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, “The President sold this act to the American people as anything but what it is, a tax increase. The President’s healthcare law has increased costs for American families, and hurt job creation when we needed it most.”

    I get that asking Rep. Tipton to explain and support his comment assumes that he himself understands it, as opposed to being able to mouth the words on the paper.  But it would be nice to see any proof or even evidence that ACA has caused prices to go up or hurt job creation in Colorado.

    For me, and I have no idea if it is related, my premium has decreased in the last year, by about $60 month.  In addition my one ‘pre-existing condition’ that BCBS refused to cover, is now covered.  So my insurance is cheaper and the coverage is more complete.  

    Based on this, probably the type of anecdotal ‘evidence’ that Rep. Tipton is likely to bring up should he actually be challenged by the transcribers who have replaced reporters in this nation, we can conclude from my story that Obamacare results in better coverage at a lesser price.  

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