Like every other President…Trump will do some things right…and he will screw up others royally.
I’m excited to see his personal narrative unfold.
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He will not be as good as his fans want, and he won’t be as bad as his critics say.
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To be fair, is there a single politician/king/person, alive or dead, for whom this is not true?
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Obama getting his final punches in
Should I provide a trigger warning so you can find your safe space? 
I disagree here. Costs go up largely because they can. I do not want the government to run healthcare, but it does need monitoring and regulations.
People can stay sick or choose to die because they are afraid to put their families in crushing debt.
That being said, right now alot of regulation is designed to stifle competition and reduce free market forces from allowing proper competition. Hence a liter of saline is $250, because they can screw you, not because we have the best saline on the face of the earth.
Free market forces need to be allowed to work and the government needs to protect patients from price gouging.
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LOL…I think it makes one far more ready to lead than say a certain left wing Senator who only had two years in Washington before being elected to the Presidency.
I think any CEO of a large company has a better chance of being a successful President than a Senator who has no Chief Executive experience.
But of course we will find out in due time.
No way the tolerant left would never do such a thing.
Neither hospitals, doctors offices, nor health insurance companies are that much more profitable that other industries. Price gouging works as good anecdotal evidence, but if it was really driving healthcare costs to grow as fast as they do, some link in the chain would be getting rich.
Another way to look at that is there already is competition. Most healthcare is provided by employers and most employers have multiple options for insurance providers. That means insurance companies have to compete. Insurance companies negotiate rates with hospitals and have no incentive to overpay. In fact, insurance companies have whole divisions of people whose entire job is to make sure they don’t overpay.
Frankly, I hope it is possible to reorganize the healthcare system such that costs are brought down. I’m just skeptical that it’s possible.
Right… so the costs didn’t go up because there was a mandate, with penalties, for every US citizen to subscribe to insurance?
Insurance companies bet on you being healthy, if everyone now is required to have insurance, and they can’t determine rates based on previous conditions, you can damn well bet the risk-prices are going way the hell up.
Inefficiencies wouldn’t just arrive in the form of high profit, competitive pressure forces increases in efficiency just to remain profitable.
What’s your thoughts on focusing more on preventative care? Our entire healthcare system seems more focused on treating the symptoms but if there were incentives to prevention I imagine the cost savings would be exponential. I would think this would actually be something Insurers would be interested in.
The mandate and requirement to insure pre-existing conditions doesn’t affect the cost of care, just the cost of insurance.
Capitalism says that inefficiencies should naturally be eliminated by greedy people in order to obtain higher profit. If high profit is not achieved, that means either there aren’t large enough inefficiencies to make a high profit through their elimination or people aren’t greedy.
Mind you, I’m not saying that inefficiencies don’t exist or that there aren’t problems. I just don’t think the magnitude of the inefficiencies is on the same scale as the increases in cost that we are seeing.
In regards to preventative care, there are some gains to be made, but certainly not exponential. The thing about preventative care is the better we get at it, the longer people live. Old people need more care and so the cost savings get eaten up.
Most major insurers have this. Depending on the level of the plan they include gym membership coverage or discounts and comp for supps.
One I was enrolled in even had a logging system so that you could track all of your health metrics. Of course this helps them too, both with healthier (lower risk) clients and a treasure trove of data.
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Ok here is a little article that I feel explains the Liberal attack rationale
Great article treco and quite frankly I have never looked at the lefts irrational behavior in this way before.
WHile you may be right, I think you’re undercutting the very real possibility the man isn’t nearly as stupid or narrow minded as you think he is.
I can count on less than one finger the number of dumb people worth that much money who are in control of their own money.
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I’m not saying Trump is dumb - I’d venture to say that he’s probably pretty smart.
Like him or not (and I do not like him), he knows his way around the media and his branding franchises show that he can create added value to his father’s real estate empire.
But like I said before, he’s a real estate developer at heart.
I’ve worked for several ME and Asian versions of Trump in my business career. All very smart, but with an attention span of a goldfish, loud, brash, seeing everything in black and white terms, constantly interrupting, easily bored, prone to refer you impatiently to their “guys” when discussions get too boring or too technical (and that’s almost every time).
I believe these character/personality traits aren’t suitable for a POTUS. The same way I wouldn’t like to see a Silicon Valley CEO suffering from a mild case of Asperger’s as a POTUS,
Last time when a POTUS believed he can “do business” with the USSR/Russia, he was
immediately hoodwinked and we ended up with the Cold War.
So the only thing the enemies of the US have to do is keep policy lines blurred (no pun intended). No compelling black-or-white event to change your foreign policy, but slow, incremental changes that result in a sudden fait accompli. Think Turkey’s pivot to Russia for example.
Obama’s chronic indecisiveness and paralysis showed them how it’s supposed to be done. And real estate developers do not like uncertainty and blurred lines. Either the building is being built or not. Either you have all the permits or you don’t. No time for nuances and geopolitical lessions.
So they get frustrated and may simple shift their attentions elsewhere. And that’s a bad thing, not only for the USA but for the whole world.
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