Is the Obama Honeymoon Over?

[garbon]

What a tool.

[grumbler]

I remember there was a graph in The Economist few months ago comparing health care costs in various Western countries. Germany was the country with the second highest health care costs per capita, after the US.

What was staggering, the US government was paying exactly the same amount of money, per capita, as the highly socialized German government, but then the same amount was paid again by US employers (whereas German ones didn't pay a dime) - effectively, this debunked any myths about the US health care not being socialized- it's just damn expensive.

Correct.  The same procedures and medicines cost far more int he US than in nations with socialized health care, because no one can see where the costs are except the employers, and they are competing with each other for the high-value employees.

The administrative costs of the US health care system are also obscene.

[citizen k]

Two injectable medicines I get are each about two grand per month.  :pinchL

Thank Hod for socialized medicine (medicare).

[jimmy olsen]

Xrays, MRIs, Catscans, three kinds of chemo, a big operation, pain medication, nausea medication, medication to protect me from the chemo, probably 2 months worth of time overnight in the hospital, etc, so when you had it all up it doesn't sound that bad.

Hundreds of thousands to cure one guy of one disease?  And it is not like you are the only dude to get cancer in this country so they have to do something out of the ordinary or experimental.

No wonder we are all going bankrupt.

I think you're underestimating the difficulty in combating cancer.

[Sheilbh]

As far as I understand his approval rating's moved down in the past month but within 1-2% in the past week or two, as it's moved within that space from 60% since February.

I don't think the honeymoon has ended because of how bad people seemed to feel when voting him in.  Shelley was right, from despair comes hope, however misplaced.  I still think Obama's like Blair; the opposition don't know how to attack him and so even when he fucks up they won't benefit.  Also similar to Blair is that I don't think we've seen as strong disapproval of a president as we saw of Bush since Carter, so Obama gets a natural boost, just like after Major even Gordon Brown would present a commanding figure.

[Savonarola]

As far as I understand his approval rating's moved down in the past month but within 1-2% in the past week or two, as it's moved within that space from 60% since February.

I don't think the honeymoon has ended because of how bad people seemed to feel when voting him in.  Shelley was right, from despair comes hope, however misplaced.  I still think Obama's like Blair; the opposition don't know how to attack him and so even when he fucks up they won't benefit.  Also similar to Blair is that I don't think we've seen as strong disapproval of a president as we saw of Bush since Carter, so Obama gets a natural boost, just like after Major even Gordon Brown would present a commanding figure.

Love the Shelley reference.

Since the approval/disapproval polls began America has never seen such a strong disapproval rating for a president for so long as they did for Bush II.  Even Truman, Nixon and Johnson didn't have disapproval ratings for as many months as Bush did.

[derspiess]

Health Care simply has to be reformed.  Nobody has ever paid more for less in the history of the world than we do for health care.

I don't disagree with that.  But the choices are not only Obama's plan or the status quo, as the Dems are trying to convince us.

[derspiess]

People watch network news? 

Yeah, old people.  And old people vote

[Valmy]

I think you're underestimating the difficulty in combating cancer.

I think you are underestimating how staggeringly overpriced your treatment was.  Millions of Americans have cancer every year.  It is simply impossible to believe that we have to shell out enough to sustain a family of four for life in order to cure one person.

[Valmy]

Correct.  The same procedures and medicines cost far more int he US than in nations with socialized health care, because no one can see where the costs are except the employers, and they are competing with each other for the high-value employees.

The administrative costs of the US health care system are also obscene.

Yeah it is pretty ridiculous.  We managed to create a system even more inefficient and expensive than socialized medicine.  We should get a medal or something.

[Admiral Yi]

I think you are underestimating how staggeringly overpriced your treatment was.

What would be a reasonable price to pay?

[Valmy]

What would be a reasonable price to pay?

There is no freaking way anybody could afford to pay that sort of money going by market value.  Tim is talking that to cure him of one disease it costs about what the average American households entire income would be for several years (depending upon exactly how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we are talking about).  I mean that is simply bullshit...beyond bullshit unless we are talking a luxury item.

And yet we are trying prop up medicare and get insurance for people and so forth to cover shit like this.  Is it any wonder it is going tits up?

Surely there has to be a more efficient way of treating cancer effectively than that.

[Martinus]

I think you won't be able to reform healthcare in the US without the tort reform.

[Iormlund]

What would be a reasonable price to pay?

There is no freaking way anybody could afford to pay that sort of money going by market value.  Tim is talking that to cure him of one disease it costs about what the average American households entire income would be for several years (depending upon exactly how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we are talking about).  I mean that is simply bullshit...beyond bullshit unless we are talking a luxury item.

And yet we are trying prop up medicare and get insurance for people and so forth to cover shit like this.  Is it any wonder it is going tits up?

Surely there has to be a more efficient way of treating cancer effectively than that.

Medicine in general is very expensive. Treatment for my Crohn's has included 4 CAT scans, 4 barium swallows, 2 ecos, tons of X-rays, around 2 months at the hospital, 3 hours of surgery, maybe 20 visits to my specialist, 6 or 7 to the ER and lots of relatively cheap medication. That probably amounts at least to $ 100k or so. And that's only because I haven't had that chance/need to take biologics yet, like I suspect Citizen K does, which can amount to $ 30k or 40k a year.

Of course in the States that would cost 2 or 3 times more. But yeah, medicine is fucking expensive. Which also explains why most bankruptcies over there are related to medical bills.

[Ancient Demon]

I think you won't be able to reform healthcare in the US without the tort reform.