A Futile and Stupid Gesture: The History of the First Trump Presidency & Q-Anon

Reminder: Nunes was a member of the Trump transition team during the time of the Russian contacts. It would explain his actions yesterday if he learned that his name was one of the redacted ones on the FISA transcripts. ("I, uh, gotta go see a guy about a thing." Cue Scooby-Doo running noise.)

I hope no members of the transition team are installing any jacuzzis in their fourth-floor apartments any time soon.
 
OfficePants said:
Trump has an almost insurmountable job, and I feel bad for what he's up against... by my is he a skilled troll.

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The media and elements of the IC appear to have lost all grasp on reality, the current Red scare will end in them walking into the trap of the master Troll. It's going to be great to watch!
 
Lord Buckley said:
The media and elements of the IC appear to have lost all grasp on reality, the current Red scare will end in them walking into the trap of the master Troll. It's going to be great to watch!
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Indeed. He snared them again with the wiretap tweets.

The best solution to a red scare is a red pill.
 


Nunes:
07-minister.jpg
 
doghouse said:
The Trump Elite. Like the Old Elite, but Worse!
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Hilarious! (But also very very sad because it means 24 million people will lose healthcare coverage).

I expect a sharp swing to the left in the next elections, and the right to desperately oppose any new policy by the now socialist DNC, effectively stopping the government from functioning efficiently, after which a "strong" leader will emerge who promises to fix things...
 
doghouse said:
Bwahaha.

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maybe this was his plan all along? kill ryan dead in the water. what possible credibility could ryan have left after this debacle? just imagine, if in 2 weeks trump comes out and says "ok, we tried it their way, it failed, now we're going with single payer!" he'd be the most popular president ever.
 
Rambo said:
maybe this was his plan all along? kill ryan dead in the water. what possible credibility could ryan have left after this debacle? just imagine, if in 2 weeks trump comes out and says "ok, we tried it their way, it failed, now we're going with single payer!" he'd be the most popular president ever.
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You're rationalising. This was not the plan all along.
 
Rambo said:
Believe me, I know this. But he doesn't. I do think he wants to fuck over Ryan though.
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Also false. Trump does not want to take responsibility for any failures whatsoever. He will blame whoever is easiest to blame. In this case it'll be Ryan and the freedom caucus.
 
Congressional Republicants have had 7 fucking years to put a watertight plan together to enact this legislation.

I'm sure at some point Trump trusted they had their shit together.

What has been exposed here is how bad congress is, like we didn't know. Trump is pretty wily. He expected the vote to fail to make them look like shit.

And yes, new leadership. Ryan isn't up to the job.
 
The Republican healthcare plan is failing because Trump is bad at making deals

I wrote on Wednesday that Republicans forced themselves into a corner with seven years of lying and overpromising about healthcare. The fact that nothing they do now will live up to the promises they made before is a big political problem.

That's on the whole party.

But the specific failure to pass the American Health Care Act — the option Republican leaders had decided was the least-bad way to deal with their healthcare predicament — is on President Donald Trump.

Specifically, the bill can't pass because Trump is a bad dealmaker. We have a president who cannot close. Sad!

I realize Trump and his fans would object to this characterization. How could I malign the dealmaking skill of the author of The Art of the Deal?

Let us count the ways that Trump's dealmaking deficits have derailed the bill he said was "terrific."

Trump weakened his negotiating position by showing his hand
Trump's public comments about the healthcare bill gave individual Republicans in Congress two pieces of information that reduced their incentive to compromise with him about the bill's contents:

  1. Trump doesn't really care what the bill does, exactly, so long as he can sign it and say that it "repeals and replaces" Obamacare.
  2. Trump really, really wants to sign some bill quickly so he can get past this healthcare chore and move on to fun topics like trade and taxes.
You don't walk into a negotiation and tell your counterparty that you're desperate to make a deal fast and on any terms. But Trump did just that, which is why Freedom Caucus members knew the White House was bluffing when they claimed the bill was closed and wouldn't be amended further.

Trump invited the Freedom Caucus to squeeze him dry. Weak! Bad!

Trump eventually seemed to realize this error, claiming if no bill passed by Friday he wouldn't participate in future efforts to repeal Obamacare.

But that threat was implausible because of his prior admissions. He should have read his own book:




Trump is too untrustworthy to make credible side-deals
Usually, a legislative negotiation isn't just about what's in a bill.

Often, a member of Congress agrees to vote for the president's pet piece of legislation, and the president promises to advance the member's favorite regulatory initiative, or to advocate for another piece of legislation later, or to campaign for that member's reelection.

Trump might be making such promises. But because he has a decades-long reputation for renegeing on his promises to counterparties, members are unlikely to trust Trump when he does so. This limits his negotiating toolbox; because he can't be trusted, his promises have to be made good in the bill text itself.

Trump's assurance that the bill's limitations — for example, its limited impact on insurance regulations under Obamacare — will be addressed through executive action and future legislation do not seem to be convincing enough of his party's own representatives to get this bill passed.

In a way, this is similar to the way Trump alienated mainstream banks with his reputation for not repaying debts, forcing him to seek increasingly creative means of financing his businesses. Screwing your partner in one deal makes it harder to get the next deal done.

There is an exception that proves the rule that side deals don't work for Trump.

One of the "no" votes who did flip to "yes" on the AHCA is Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania. Barletta's signature issue is illegal immigration (he's opposed) and he said he couldn't vote for the AHCA because he didn't have sufficient assurance that illegal immigrants wouldn't get insurance tax credits. Barletta changed his position once he was promised Trump would support his legislation to address the issue.

Trump can credibly promise to take punitive action toward illegal immigrants, because that is a passion of his. Beyond that, his lack of credibility is undermining his negotiating position.

Trump's policy ignorance hinders his judgment about what terms to propose
"Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated," Trump declared in February.

Actually, a lot of people did know that, but Trump seems to have been personally unprepared for the interconnected nature of healthcare policy. Moving the wrong piece can cause the healthcare market to crash down like a Jenga tower, and Trump has no idea how to determine which blocks are loose.

This is how the White House apparently ended up offering Freedom Caucus members the repeal of Essential Health Benefits rules from Obamacare, as part of a last-ditch effort to win their votes.

This policy change — which would allow insurers to sell health plans that don't cover pregnancy, or even plans that don't cover doctor's visits at all — moves the bill to the "right" and looks at first glance like something that should help conservative members of the House Republican conference get on board.

But as I wrote on Wednesday, repealing the EHB rules while leaving other Obamacare rules in place would create a huge mess in health insurance markets that doesn't appeal to anyone. Rep. Justin Amash, one of the sharpest critics of Obamacare's healthcare regulations in the House, said repealing this specific regulation by itself "makes the bill worse, not better."

By making the EHB offer, Trump scared away moderates like Rep. Charlie Dent and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, but did not pick up the votes of many Freedom Caucus members who pointed out (not unreasonably) that if you're going to repeal EHB you also need to repeal Obamacare's rule that requires insurers to cover pre-existing conditions, as otherwise insurance markets could collapse.

If Trump understood health insurance policy (or asked someone who did) he would have known that Essential Health Benefits rules and pre-existing condition rules go together like peas and carrots, and he shouldn't offer to repeal one if he's dead set on keeping the other.

But he didn't, so he offered something that made the deal all that much harder to close.

Trump has never been good at deals
Trump is a highly successful businessman. But he is not, like he claims, a highly successful dealmaker.

Trump is an incredibly talented, natural marketer. He was very good at convincing people they should want to buy Trump apartments, reasonably good at convincing people they should want to golf at Trump golf clubs, and for a time quite successful at getting people to want to watch Trump fire people on television.

Trump innately understands certain kinds of consumers, and he understood things about the electorate that none of his opponents in the 2016 election did. There are reasons he won an election that nobody believed he could.

He wasn't very good at convincing people they should want to buy Trump Steaks, but then, nobody bats one-thousand.

We know from what we've seen of Trump's tax returns that he lost a great deal of money in the 1990s and that he was making a great deal of money by the mid-2000s. Not coincidentally, over this period Trump shifted the focus of his professional endeavors away from businesses that were heavy on dealmaking and toward businesses that were heavy on marketing, particularly arrangements where he would rent his name to somebody else who was actually in the business of developing real estate.

Unfortunately, unlike the general endeavor of being a "famous, rich business guy," there is no way to adjust the presidency so it's heavier on the marketing aspects and lighter on the dealmaking aspects.

It's a president's job to make deals. And Trump's lack of talent for dealmaking is going to be a major liability for him in office.
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OfficePants said:
Congressional Republicants have had 7 fucking years to put a watertight plan together to enact this legislation.

I'm sure at some point Trump trusted they had their shit together.

What has been exposed here is how bad congress is, like we didn't know. Trump is pretty wily. He expected the vote to fail to make them look like shit.

And yes, new leadership. Ryan isn't up to the job.
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Trey Gowdy ought to replace RINO Ryan. Trump plays 4D Chess, son.
 
Where is the discussion of facts when it comes to health care?

Why do we keep talking about the cost of "health insurance" when that's a symptom and not the problem?

Why do we keep talking about "subsidies" (tax credits, etc)?

If you're coughing incessantly because you have lung cancer do you simply take a cough suppressant and call that a "fix" when you stop coughing for a while?

That entire line of discussion, which is the only discussion being held politically and in the news, is a fraud.

Why?

Two reasons: First, "health insurance" is not insurance to the extent it covers an event that is either certain to happen or has already happened. Insurance is a thing you buy to cover a possible future event you cannot pay for yourself. It is less expensive than the event will be only because the probability is less than 1.0 -- that is, the event is unlikely. If the event is either certain or worse, has already happened then the probability is 1.0 and the cost of "insurance" against such an event is always more than simply paying for it in cash because the insurance company has costs it must cover or it will go out of business.

Let me repeat that just in case you missed it: The cost of insuring against a bad event is directly and mathematically determinable by the cost and probability of said event.

Second, due to the above mathematical fact if you wish to decrease the amount "insurance" costs there is only one way to do it: You must decrease the cost of the event, the probability of the event or both.

This is arithmetic, not politics and anyone arguing otherwise needs to be indicted, tried, convicted and imprisoned for their intentional act of fraud upon the public because that's exactly what they're doing -- defrauding you.

I don't care if they're pundits, media personalities, Congresspeople or the President -- and I remind you that The President is well aware of how insurance actually works since he's been a Real Estate developer and operator for decades.

Now let's address the only two means by which we can lower health insurance costs. And lower them we can -- by 90% or so, and quickly too -- in fact, within months.

First, insurance must be actual insurance. In other words it must only cover events for which p < 1.0. By definition those are events that are neither certain to happen (e.g. routine, every-day visits to a doctor) or have already happened (e.g. pre-existing conditions.)

While you might be able to buy fire insurance on your house if it's on fire (or you are in the process of setting it on fire!) the cost of that insurance will always be more than the fire damage to said house because the probability is 1.0 and the company has to cover its cost and make a profit or it goes out of business. It is therefore always cheaper to simply pay cash for the fire damage than to buy said "insurance" and this is true irrespective of what you're "insuring" -- including health.

Again, this is math, not politics.

Second, we must address both "p" (probability) and "c" (COST.)

We must address "p" (probability) because it will directly and grossly reduce the cost of insurance since it is a multiplier to cost. Reducing "p" by 10% directly reduces cost of insurance by 10% all other things being equal.

We must address "c" (cost) because that not only reduces the cost of insurance (but on a smaller basis than "p" since it's multiplied by the fraction of risk) for the person who has already had the bad thing happen to them medically it enables them to pay directly for the treatment required. I remind you that paying directly is always going to be cheaper than running that same payment through an "insurance" company (typically by about 10-20%) because said company has costs that have to be covered.

Let's take "p" on first. An utterly enormous amount of health expense occurs because people choose to be overweight or obese. As noted in a previous Ticker the American Diabetes Association claims $250 billion a year is spent by Medicare alone due to both the disease and its effects. Best guess is that another $150 billion is spent by Medicaid (which they don't specify.) This is for one disease and essentially all of that money doesn't have to be spent. It is spent because people choose to consume foods that promote and exacerbate the condition rather than reduce or even eliminate its effects. The cost of changing what you put in the pie hole, medically, is of course zero. Therefore for each person who is diabetic (Type II) and makes said lifestyle change resulting in either the control or elimination of the harm to their body from same we eliminate all of the health spending by said person on said disorder!

There are myriad other diseases and disorders associated with being obese and overweight. Hip and knee damage, eventually leading to (expensive) replacement surgeries, for one. Heart attacks and strokes (many caused by high blood pressure that, again, is often a result of being overweight) for another. These are all avoidable costs and if we wish to address the cost of health care reducing "p", the probability of bad events, is a key item.

It is absolutely true that personal choice is a huge factor here and the government does not have the right to tell you how or what to eat. However, you do not have the right to demand that someone other than yourself pay for the consequences of your personal decisions.

It is therefore perfectly reasonable to put in place a protocol that says if you are overweight or obese and diabetic then the lifestyle change in terms of what you put in the pie hole that has a near-100% record of reducing or eliminating your need for drugs and medical procedures and has a cost of zero will be the only option offered under said publicly-funded programs until and unless you prove, by individually-shown test, that it doesn't work in the case of your particular metabolic makeup.

Doing this for one disease alone would cut roughly $400 billion off the federal budget this year and every year thereafter and would cost the patient exactly zero on top of it.

Can we extend this demand to private health care policies by force? No, but we can certainly allow companies to multiply their pricing by the change in "p" that not following such a lifestyle, if you're overweight or obese, comes with. Since this one disease is such a huge component of said spending my best guess is that the surcharge for refusal would likely be 25% or more and if you're already diabetic then it can (and should) be an immediate disqualifier for any coverage of any consequential event whatsoever unless you prove, by individual test, that the lifestyle change outlined above doesn't result in control of your condition.

Second, we must break all the monopolies in the medical system. There are in fact simple ways to do this, requiring no new laws, which I've outlined before going way back in time.

If you force price transparency by treating any health provider who refuses to do so, or who tries to bill on a discriminatory basis as committing a criminal act under existing consumer protection and anti-trust laws (at both the State and Federal levels) you will instantly and permanently remove all so-called "network" games, break the monopoly pricing games played by the health industry and as a result competition will cause prices to fall like a stone.

It's worthless to even attempt to argue that this "can't" or "won't" work because we know it does. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma does exactly this right here, right now, today and their pricing with the monopolist-laced chain of supplies for drugs and surgical devices still undercuts "traditional" hospital prices by 80%. For example a cardiac bypass is $10,700 -- cash, all-in, one-price and if there's a complication taking care of that is included.

Can you come up with $10 large to save your life if you need it? Almost-certainly, even if you're poor. Yes, it would be a lot of money for someone without material means, but remember -- we're talking about a price that's anywhere from 1/10th to 1/5th of what that same procedure costs in a "traditional" hospital setting and you're choosing between that and death.

Don't tell me it can't be done and wouldn't result in these sorts of cost reductions because it is being done right now, right here, today and has resulted in these cost reductions -- even with a huge part of the medical scamjob monopolist games still embedded in their pricing because they can't get away from the drug monster in their ORs at present. In other words their pricing is high (probably by 20% or so) compared to what it would be if we stopped all of the monopolist games.

Here's the bottom line folks -- if you think "health insurance" costs too much you're being misled. The problem isn't health insurance it's the cost of health care. The solution to the problem is to first require firms to offer true insurance (that is, does not cover events where p = 1.0) then require all providers to post prices and charge everyone the same amount.

Next, using existing law you then indict and prosecute all violations of 15 USC Ch 1; the health insurance and related industries already tried to claim exemption in a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1979 and they lost. It is therefore simply a matter of political willpower to get out the handcuffs and start issuing indictments. That will further collapse prices since now providers will be forced to compete for business.

To put numbers on this we're talking about "health insurance" for catastrophic events being something that costs the average person well under $100 a month and for virtually everyone they would pay only a few hundred dollars more a year in direct, uninsured cost.

With the cost of care collapsed to 1/5th of what it is now for the truly indigent we can certainly afford to help -- but for nearly everyone we won't need to, because even those of modest means can afford to pay cash at a price 1/5th of what is charged in the United States today.

The obvious question is "Why won't Donald Trump or Congress take this position, since it's clear on the math that it will solve the problem permanently and at the same time nearly eliminate both the Federal budget deficit and all State and Private Pension budget problems at the same time?"

The answer is quite simple: Doing so will cause an immediate and deep recession as the health industry collapses from ~19% of domestic output back to its historical level of about 3-4%.

Said recession won't last very long because that money will get redeployed in other areas of the economy but until it does the impact on GDP will be severe, immediate and deep -- and both Congress and Trump know it.

Oh, and it will put a whole bunch of lobbyists out of business too.
 
Arnathor said:
Trey Gowdy ought to replace RINO Ryan. Trump plays 4D Chess, son.
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QuandoDio said:
Nope. Trump is still trying to figure out elementary checkers. Whilst Putin is the chess grandmaster, son.
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I think both are true in different situations.

Yes, I have seen some really slick maneuvers by Trump, like the spying tweets.

But I think this healthcare debacle was partly about his not reading the complexities of congress, and how dysfunctional a place it really is.

But he learned quick and reached a point where it was time to stop and told them he compromised and it was time to make a deal or fuck off.

Next time they come in knowing that Trump has limits.

Its a strategic loss that was never necessary but for the inept Ryan.
 
LelandJ said:
Where is the discussion of facts when it comes to health care?


Two reasons: First, "health insurance" is not insurance to the extent it covers an event that is either certain to happen or has already happened. Insurance is a thing you buy to cover a possible future event you cannot pay for yourself. It is less expensive than the event will be only because the probability is less than 1.0 -- that is, the event is unlikely. If the event is either certain or worse, has already happened then the probability is 1.0 and the cost of "insurance" against such an event is always more than simply paying for it in cash because the insurance company has costs it must cover or it will go out of business.
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Everyone knows or should know that "insurance" is a word that is commonly used but actually refers to third party medical benefits. The cost of fees associated with medical care is fully or partially covered.

LelandJ said:
It is absolutely true that personal choice is a huge factor here and the government does not have the right to tell you how or what to eat. However, you do not have the right to demand that someone other than yourself pay for the consequences of your personal decisions.

It is therefore perfectly reasonable to put in place a protocol that says if you are overweight or obese and diabetic then the lifestyle change in terms of what you put in the pie hole that has a near-100% record of reducing or eliminating your need for drugs and medical procedures and has a cost of zero will be the only option offered under said publicly-funded programs until and unless you prove, by individually-shown test, that it doesn't work in the case of your particular metabolic makeup.

Doing this for one disease alone would cut roughly $400 billion off the federal budget this year and every year thereafter and would cost the patient exactly zero on top of it.
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Duh. But good luck in changing behaviour. Oh wait, you will change behaviour by denying people medical benefits in another way that the current system denies them and forcing them to be healthy!

LelandJ said:
To put numbers on this we're talking about "health insurance" for catastrophic events being something that costs the average person well under $100 a month and for virtually everyone they would pay only a few hundred dollars more a year in direct, uninsured cost.

With the cost of care collapsed to 1/5th of what it is now for the truly indigent we can certainly afford to help -- but for nearly everyone we won't need to, because even those of modest means can afford to pay cash at a price 1/5th of what is charged in the United States today.
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Knocking 80% off the cost of healthcare services? Good luck.

How are you dealing with docs pay?

GPpay.jpg


crsdoctors.jpg


Oh yes, fatties starving themselves for the hopes of getting their diabetes treated will fund the 80% cut in healthcare fees

Maybe you can bring in some third world docs who will advertise cut rate fees and shame American docs into taking less money.
 
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