How Full Of S#it Is This Hill OP? Let Me Count The Ways

[skews13.]

Cross-posted from ACASignups.net.

Someone alerted me to a column posted over at The HIll last week written by Dean Clancy, a “Senior Health Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.”

It looks like AFP isn’t the only right-wing organization to pick up the talking points in this piece & run with them; apparently nearly 3 dozen others have sent a letter to Donald Trump using the exact same garbage talking points.

With that in mind, let’s go through the entire Hill post point by point, shall we?​

How full of sh*t is this Hill Op-Ed? Let me count the ways.

Cross-posted from ACASignups.net. Someone alerted me to a column posted over at The HIll last week written by Dean Clancy, a “Senior Health Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.” It looks like AFP isn’t the only right-wing organization to pick up...

www.dailykos.com

As soon as I saw Americans for Prosperity, I already knew it was full of shit.

 

[ColdHardTruth]

Cross-posted from ACASignups.net.

Someone alerted me to a column posted over at The HIll last week written by Dean Clancy, a “Senior Health Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.”

It looks like AFP isn’t the only right-wing organization to pick up the talking points in this piece & run with them; apparently nearly 3 dozen others have sent a letter to Donald Trump using the exact same garbage talking points.

With that in mind, let’s go through the entire Hill post point by point, shall we?​

How full of sh*t is this Hill Op-Ed? Let me count the ways.

Cross-posted from ACASignups.net. Someone alerted me to a column posted over at The HIll last week written by Dean Clancy, a “Senior Health Policy Fellow at Americans for Prosperity.” It looks like AFP isn’t the only right-wing organization to pick up...

www.dailykos.com

As soon as I saw Americans for Prosperity, I already knew it was full of shit.

The Koch brothers have always been scumbags.

 

[Common Sense 1]

The Koch brothers have always been scumbags.

David Koch passed away on August 23, 2019, while his brother Charles Koch is still alive as of now. David was known for his significant contributions to conservative political causes and philanthropy.

Duck Duck Go search assist:

 

[ColdHardTruth]

David Koch passed away on August 23, 2019, while his brother Charles Koch is still alive as of now. David was known for his significant contributions to conservative political causes and philanthropy.

Duck Duck Go search assist:

and the right-wing has the nerve to complain about Soros.

 

[Common Sense 1]

and the right-wing has the nerve to complain about Soros.

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion Of His Stock To Two Nonprofits​

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion To Two Nonprofits

His previously unreported $4.3 billion gift to Believe in People is now the largest publicly disclosed donation to a 501(c)4–a type of nonprofit with fewer restrictions on lobbying and politics than traditional charities.

www.forbes.com

 

[What if...?]

David Koch passed away on August 23, 2019, while his brother Charles Koch is still alive as of now. David was known for his significant contributions to conservative political causes and philanthropy.

Duck Duck Go search assist:

Didn’t the Koch brothers come up with what we call “Libertarianism”?

 

[What if...?]

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion Of His Stock To Two Nonprofits​

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion To Two Nonprofits

His previously unreported $4.3 billion gift to Believe in People is now the largest publicly disclosed donation to a 501(c)4–a type of nonprofit with fewer restrictions on lobbying and politics than traditional charities.

www.forbes.com

And they have totally figured out how to get around the restrictions on “electioneering”.

This type can’t be “primarily” political. So the rule is only 49% of donations can go to electioneering.

Them Then the other 51% is donated to another 501(c)(4). Which then spends 49% of that on electioneering then donates the other 51% to another.

Until it gets down to chump change.

This was what the hubbub about the “IRS targeting conservative nonprofits was all about.

501(c)(3) can do most of what a 501(c)(4) can do. But the former’s donors are reported. 501(c)(4) are not.

So after Citizens United made unlimited money ok the IRS was deluged with 501(c)(4) applications and the lazybones decided to use search tech to parse them instead of going through each one. Liberal groups got caught up as well, but those apparently didn’t count with the right.

And it sure does look like that process has yielded great results for the donor class.

 

[Luce]

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion Of His Stock To Two Nonprofits​

Exclusive: Charles Koch Has Given More Than $5 Billion To Two Nonprofits

His previously unreported $4.3 billion gift to Believe in People is now the largest publicly disclosed donation to a 501(c)4–a type of nonprofit with fewer restrictions on lobbying and politics than traditional charities.

www.forbes.com

Now read the article and see WHICH nonprofits.

Ouch. Self burn.

 

[ColdHardTruth]

David Koch passed away on August 23, 2019, while his brother Charles Koch is still alive as of now. David was known for his significant contributions to conservative political causes and philanthropy.

Duck Duck Go search assist:

That doesn't mean they aren't scumbags.

David is gone.

His brother is still a scumbag.

 

[Fearandloathing]

The Koch brothers have always been scumbags.

WOW!!!


Points for diversion!!!!!

 

[ColdHardTruth]

WOW!!!


Points for diversion!!!!!

I am not diverting anything.

It was a simple statement.

 

[bythoughts]

The editorial is deeply wrong in the sense of leaving the benefits to expire first, and figure out the rest afterwards. People need to live now and figure out the rest later.

But it is not wrong in prioritizing a raw decrease in health care costs. That is the only way. Every time we try to get the boot off the neck of any American prone to get sick (which is everybody) by making coverage more reasonable, somehow the chisellers in charge manage to jack up the rates again - much faster than inflation, much faster than anybody can pay for them.

We need to pull out a serious cudgel to deal with all this conniving. AFP seems to want that cudgel to be that the poor just die if they get sick. But we can do far better - we can make it a libertarian cudgel!

One thing we need to do is to give patients real control over health care. That means that if you know you need a medicine, you can just buy it. It is recommended to have a prescription. Provided there's some way to pay for it, people should get one. But put the onus on the industry to make that recommendation available affordably. Consider relief valves like letting pharmacists prescribe like in many other countries.

Another is to avoid the bottleneck in medical training and personnel. Have cheaper specialized medics with more limited training to deal with single issues, such as flu-like illnesses or sciatica.

Another thing is to have clear, fair pricing. No more "you pay ten times as much because you don't have insurance". That kind of confiscatory capitalism, done to often incapacitated patients, is completely insane. The businesses should have a price tag that is out in the open and doesn't change depending on who looks at it.

Another is to relax drug regulation. What is presented as an incorruptible method of ensuring safe medicine is comically not so. They have done things like take colchicine - a simple flower extract used for thousands of years - and turned it into the proprietary drug of one company (Colcrys), because it filed some regulatory papers about safety. Meanwhile, antibiotic after antibiotic is rendered useless by resistance, and we continue wasting them, because we can't manage to find it in our system to allow the successful phage therapy approach that has been used in the Soviet Union from the 1930s on. Every few years I read something about how it's going to be "studied", the same tired apologies, but no action. We could start by letting compounding pharmacies off the leash and stop using every single incident that occurs - a tiny minority of the medically induced deaths in this country - as an excuse to take away their fossilized liberties.

 

[Helix]

I don't read The Hill nearly as much since they deleted the comment section. That was the best part.