Forcing people to do what their religion forbids

Nobody wants to be an absolutist about it, but such coercion can certainly be overdone.

Forcing medical professionals or institutions to perform procedures that violate conscience is overdoing it.

And in that regard abortion is not the only issue.

Another Catholic Hospital Sued for Refusing Transgender Hysterectomy

How much worse would things get in this regard if we had outright socialized medicine like the NHS of the Brits?

A lot worse.

Even handing over the entire health insurance market to a single federal government run insurer would significantly diminish this liberty.

And would subject provision of medical services to rationing on the basis of invidious comparisons of the worth of individual lives, and subject R&D to state-sponsored judgments of value, morality, and justice.

I am a Democrat and a progressive, but not an anti-capitalist and not at all a PC authoritarian.

Why it's maybe NOT such a great idea

It sounds great, single payor socialized health insurance, Medicare for All, right up until you realize the very same Democrats who want this are already planning to starve the healthcare industry for funds beginning on the very first day.

If you want the country to have the best medical care, and if you want medical care to continue to progress and do ever more and better things for our health, then you DON'T want cheapo health care.

You want to be reality based? Then suck on that reality.

Top Democrats criticize Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan

So, what do you imagine American plutes and their political sock puppets would do?

To a private health care delivery system totally dependent on payments from Medicare for All?

This is what Tories do in the UK where they do not contest that health care is a right and do not oppose the very existence of the NHS.

NHS in England facing deepening staffing crisis, figures show

Who was it who said "Starve the beast", speaking about a federal government that does not include Medicare for All, but is already way, way too Big for the taste of the real masters of the Republican Party?

Hint.

They ain't Trump voters.

What if doctoring becomes a low paying job?

Medicare for All creates the risk Republican starvation of the program would force down incomes of doctors, medical researchers, consumers of medical technology, or even producers of innovative medical technology.

And then the quality of care received by Americans would slip.

Possibly tumble off a cliff.

Torries do their level best to starve the NHS in Britain.

Can we afford Medicare for All?

Sure.

Si, se puede.

Dean Baker: 'Medicare for All' is not a fantasy

They always pick Venezuela

A nation ruined by incompetent loons and American economic warfare, both.

They never point to Canada, right next door, as an example of how things go for a country with, basically, a Medicare for All system.

Unless they want to point out that Canadians often come to big city hospitals in the US with top national care for very special doctoring.

Just as do people from Wyoming, the Dakotas, or Nebraska, I imagine.

Must be their socialism screws up health care.

Wait. What?

Wealth tax no, universal medical coverage yes.

Elizabeth Warren really doesn't like capitalism, and it shows.

Leave assets alone.

Elizabeth Warren's plan to tax the super-rich has been tried before. Here's what happened.

AOC's 70% tax on income over $ 10 million is fine, and it's not actually an attack on private wealth per se.

Medicare for all is not the only way to get health coverage for all.

But it is a way.

What am I missing?

Schultz is Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan.

He's sooooo not Ralph Nader.

So WTF?

Why is everyone saying he'll split the left and guarantee Bozo's reelection?

(And is that really his point?)

Dear billionaires: stop running for president

He and Bloomberg this morning are singing the same tune on AOC's tax plan (That's crazy talk!) and Medicare for All (We can't afford it! Oh, and socialism! Venezuela! The Democrats will turn us into Venezuela!)

The end of a nightmare for Venezuela?

The too far left of the Democratic Party is stooging for Maduro and already damning a coup that hasn't happened and the US for supporting it.

The Venezuelan military isn't going to dump Maduro.

His civilian political opponents, committed to legitimate republican government far more than he is, are trying to.

Trump of course does not give a fig for legitimate republican government.

His only concern is the truly epically failing, utterly incompetent quasi-socialism of the Bolivarian Revolution, more aspirational than real, that's wrecked the Venezuelan economy.

That is true as well of these too far leftists.

The only difference is he wants the socialist chaos to end and they want to protect it.

New liberals in Congress call Trump’s Venezuela action ‘a U.S. backed coup’

It is in no way a surprise that the also too far left Bernie also opposes any suggestion of US interference in Venezuela.

Three members of Congress, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, have released statements condemning the U.S. action in Venezuela, which so far amounts to the recognitio of Guaidó, $20 million in humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan opposition and the threat of further action if Nicolas Maduro, whom the administration sees as an illegitimate president, resorts to violence.

. . . .

The position of Gabbard, Khanna and Omar is not shared by a majority of Democrats in Congress, including congressional leaders. 

. . . .

The U.S. is not alone in its decision to recognize Guaidó. 

The United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and Colombia, and most other Latin American nations have also recognized the opposition leader. 

China, Russia, Turkey, Cuba and Bolivia are opposed to the decision, while Mexico, Uruguay and the European Union have called for more dialogue.

Gabbard, a noted opponent of U.S. involvement in foreign countries who is running for president in 2020, also opposed the decision.

“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,’ Gabbard tweeted. 

“Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders — so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

. . . .

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is mulling a 2020 presidential bid of his own, condemned recent events in Venezuela but also said the U.S. should “not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups.” 

His comments condemning Venezuela’s economic situation drew criticism from some of his supporters.

“We must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups — as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil & the DR, [Domincan Republic]” Sanders said in a statement. 

“The US has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American nations; we must not go down that road again.”

South Florida Democrats, including Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, whose districts have significant numbers of Venezuelans, are supportive of the administration’s steps and have introduced bills that would hinder Maduro’s ability to obtain arms and sell oil. 

Mucarsel-Powell also spoke at a pro-Venezuela opposition rally on Wednesday in Washington, and Wasserman Schultz is hosting an event with Venezuelan community leaders in her district on Friday.

The Democratic Socialists of America, which count U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as members, also called the decision to recognize Guaidó a “U.S.-backed coup.”

Former U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo pointed out to Omar that Guaidó’s political party, Popular Will, is described as center-left or center. Guaido’s party includes the first transgender congresswoman elected in Latin America, and party leader Leopoldo Lopez remains under house arrest by Maduro’s regime.

“You’d think a progressive would be a little more supportive. But no, the sick obsession w/ Donald Trump is blinding,” Curbelo tweeted.

Curbelo is wrong.

It's not about Trump, it's about the further left's genuine commitment to socialism.

And by "socialism" here I mean the real thing and not the so-called "social democracy" that represents a penchant within liberalism for moderate increases in the dosage of public provision of goods or services within a fundamentally capitalist society.

Think of Bernie's signature agenda items, Medicare for All and free tuition for undergrads at public colleges and universities.

As for the DSA, of which I was for a time a member, even in the days of Michael Harrington, himself personally an anti-Communist and supporter of the US in the Vietnam War, the organization always had a strong wing that prioritized socialism - real socialism, collective ownership of the means of production - over democracy so far that they defended every one of the Latin American socialist dictatorships and every effort to create new ones.

Not to mention Mao and Soviet Russia.

In short, they were Leninists, Communists, who lied about what they were.

As big a liar as the Duce? Working on it, it seems.

Looks like she's aping the man she hates.

The heroine of the younger and further left within and outside of the Democratic Party apparently makes up planet-size whoppers with the utterly heedless freedom of the pathological orangutan in the White House.

4 Pinocchios are not enough

At issue is a December tweet in which Ocasio-Cortez said that $21 trillion in the Pentagon's financial transactions "could not be traced, documented, or explained" -- and noted that such an amount of money could cover two-thirds of the total cost of Medicare for All.

But as The Washington Post's Fact Checker noted, the $21 trillion claim was quite, well, fuzzy. 

Bullshit, Chris.

It was an egregious lie on the enormous scale we have come to see can only be described as presidential after two years of Bozo's relentless and overwhelming oceans of mendacity.

Foot firmly in his mouth.

Both feet, come to that.

Biden doesn't want to hear millennials complain: 'Give me a break'

OK, he said it a year ago.

But people will be reminded, as happens in the following Guardian piece.

Why Bernie Sanders is (still) the most progressive choice for president

The central pieces of Bernie's liberal/progressive/social democratic agenda are in fact very popular: Medicare for all and free tuition at public colleges and universities.

(I would prefer Obamacare for all and tuition vouchers that could be spent at any school.)

But the man's radicalism, avowed loathing for capitalism and lifelong preference for actual, outright socialism, appealing to the Democratic and extra-Democratic left, put him further left in outlook than most Democrats and certainly than most independents.

And that's pretty much what the author of this piece, whose real favorite is the soi-disant democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is too young to be eligible for the job, regards as the exactly best reason to nominate him: that he's further left than any actual Democrat seeking and eligible for the nomination, biographically, rhetorically, and ideologically.

Which, of course, is why he isn't a Democrat.

I would prefer a nominee who is one.

Like Beto, say.

Clash of the uglies

Will the oafish admirer of autocrats who calls his adversaries in the press "enemies of the people" and has abused his power in seeking to do some of them harm really pursue "severe punishment" of the reformist autocrat who has apparently ordered the murder of an annoying critic in the press?

He is very clear he won't cancel the arms deal.

But what if they do, in response to something he does by way of "punishment"?

Saudi Arabia Rejects Trump Comments, Threatens Retaliation For Any Punishment

Turkish officials say they fear Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi after he entered the consulate, saying they have audio and video recordings of it that they have not released. 

The kingdom has called the allegations “baseless,” but has offered no evidence the writer ever left the consulate.

Hmm. A pattern emerges.

He can't say there was Russian interference because Putin and the other Russians deny it.

He rejects charges against Kavanaugh because Kavanaugh denies them.

He saying the claims the Saudis killed that fellow might well be false because the Saudis deny them.

This from a man whose own vehement denials are so often so egregiously lies.

By the way, one of his and other Republicans' current campaign charges is that Democrats want to turn America into Venezuela.

That, of course, is just another lie.

Democrats want to turn America into Denmark. Or maybe Norway. Or Sweden.

Well, at least Canada.

Medicare for all, you know.

Right up until Kavanaugh and the conservative majority of the Supremes tell us that not only Medicare but Social Security and every other progressive creation all the way back to the New Deal, or even McKinley, is unconstitutional.

A surprising number of people believe this Big Lie

The Republicans and Donald Trump are the true friends of the American (white) working class, and want to protect them from the Democrats who are not their friends but their enemies.

Ditto seniors, Social Security, and Medicare.

His fans believe this.

And they believe that absurd nonsense about Venezuela.

Donald Trump: Democrats 'Medicare for All' plan will demolish promises to seniors

I also made a solemn promise to our great seniors to protect Medicare. 

That is why I am fighting so hard against the Democrats' plan that would eviscerate Medicare. 

Democrats have already harmed seniors by slashing Medicare by more than $800 billion over 10 years to pay for Obamacare. 

Likewise, Democrats would gut Medicare with their planned government takeover of American health care.

The Democrats' plan means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice, seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised. 

By eliminating Medicare as a program for seniors, and outlawing the ability of Americans to enroll in private and employer-based plans, the Democratic plan would inevitably lead to the massive rationing of health care. 

Doctors and hospitals would be put out of business. 

Seniors would lose access to their favorite doctors. 

There would be long wait lines for appointments and procedures. 

Previously covered care would effectively be denied.

In practice, the Democratic Party’s so-called Medicare for All would really be Medicare for None. Under the Democrats' plan, today’s Medicare would be forced to die.

The Democrats' plan also would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health care decisions. 

Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors’ health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The first thing the Democratic plan will do to end choice for seniors is eliminate Medicare Advantage plans for about 20 million seniors as well as eliminate other private health plans that seniors currently use to supplement their Medicare coverage.

Next, the Democrats would eliminate every American’s private and employer-based health plan. 

It is right there in their proposed legislation: 

Democrats outlaw private health plans that offer the same benefits as the government plan. 

Americans might think that such an extreme, anti-senior, anti-choice and anti-consumer proposal for government-run health care would find little support among Democrats in Congress.

Unfortunately, they would be wrong: 123 Democrats in the House of Representatives — 64 percent of House Democrats — as well as 15 Democrats in the Senate have already formally co-sponsored this legislation. 

Democratic nominees for governor in Florida, California and Maryland are all campaigning in support of it, as are many Democratic congressional candidates.

The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. 

The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.

If Democrats win control of Congress this November, we will come dangerously closer to socialism in America. 

Government-run health care is just the beginning. 

Democrats are also pushing massive government control of education, private-sector businesses and other major sectors of the U.S. economy. 

. . . .

Today’s Democratic Party is for open-borders socialism. 

This radical agenda would destroy American prosperity. Under its vision, costs will spiral out of control. 

Taxes will skyrocket. 

And Democrats will seek to slash budgets for seniors’ Medicare, Social Security and defense.

Republicans believe that a Medicare program that was created for seniors and paid for by seniors their entire lives should always be protected and preserved. 

I am committed to resolutely defending Medicare and Social Security from the radical socialist plans of the Democrats. 

For the sake of our country, our prosperity, our seniors and all Americans — this is a fight we must win.

Well, what the heck.

Many do and others will believe that utter horseshit about civil war, too.

Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, beloved paragons of movement conservatism, both denounced Medicare before its creation as Communism's nose under the American tent, guaranteed to destroy American liberty in short order.

(Much as their elders had said of Social Security in 1935.)

Because Democrats want to destroy American capitalism and are determined to replace it with total - and totalitarian - socialism.

Between the bareknuckle capitalism of the McKinley era and out-and-out Stalinism there is no real stopping point.

The Dems want to go the whole way.

O gets on board with Medicare for All

Joe Biden led him to public acceptance of gay marriage.

Now he has come out for Medicare for All.

Obama, a centrist himself, abruptly announced that he had moved to the left now that he is out of office. He said,

So Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free.

I’m not sure either Schumer or Pelosi themselves could get behind these things, inasmuch as they are deeply beholden to the corporations. Of course, Obama wasn’t a leader on Medicare For All (single-payer) when he was actually in office.

But I think Obama’s speech demonstrates that even the old centrist warhorses among the Democrats are terrified that the blue wave won’t appear.

Monkey Business

Days later, left media are still whining about DeSantis's warnings against "monkeying around".

GOPsters are responding by shifting to repeated shouts of "socialist agenda!", "high taxes!", "Bernie Sanders!", and now even "Venezuela!" to attack Gillum.

DeSantis: Gillum wants to turn Florida 'into Venezuela'

"I would say it's very untraditional for Florida, [though] not anything to do with me, I'm a solid conservative in the Reagan tradition and I've been supportive of the president's agenda," DeSantis said.

In 1965, Ronald Reagan told America that passing the bill to create Medicare would end American freedom and impose communism.

So, yes, DeSantis is indeed in that tradition.

The crazy on the right has been around for a long, long time.

And it has included movement conservatism for all of that long, long time.

"This Andrew Gillum, he's on the far-left socialist fringe," DeSantis continued. 

"He's a Bernie Sanders, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez type candidate."

"If you have a guy like this enacting a socialist agenda it's going to absolutely destroy all the progress that Florida has made," he added. 

"He wants to turn Florida in to Venezuela."

And why are the major media playing along, joining into the GOP lie that the Gillum/Sanders agenda is "far left" and even "extreme left"?

Seen this?

This is the new mainstream, people.

The new center.

70% of Americans now support Medicare-for-all

The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. 

That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. 

Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.

Free college tuition is equally popular, though abolishing ICE is still an idea - and not really a good one - whose time has not come.

But even the Guardian is still calling such agenda items "left wing".

Democratic nominee defends leftwing policies and calls for Trump-endorsed opponent to ‘rise above’ racist attacks.

. . . .

Gillum, the 39-year-old mayor of Tallahassee, was the surprise winner of the Democratic nominating contest. 

He is endorsed by Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a young leftwinger from New York, won a primary in June and will run for election in November.

Trump greeted Gillum’s win with a tweet, saying “a failed socialist mayor … who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city … is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Speaking to Catsimatidis, DeSantis duly highlighted Gillum’s support for leftwing priorities such as “Medicare for all” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). 

The mayor has also promised to suspend the death penalty and has a low rating from the National Rifle Association.

. . . .

Gillum also defended his record on crime in Tallahassee and said he wanted to reform Ice, rather than abolish it, as part of opposition to Trump policies he said were “wholly unAmerican”.

Surprise!

Is this a hoax?

Fake news?

So a boatload of these same people are Republicans and voted for Trump?

Seventy percent of Americans support 'Medicare for all' in new poll

A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports "Medicare for all," also known as a single-payer health-care system.

The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans.

. . . .

The new Reuters poll also showed that a majority of Americans supports free college tuition. 

Forty-one percent of Republicans said they supported the policy, pollsters found, compared with 79 percent of Democrats.

The move to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was also opposed by a majority of respondents. 

Seventy percent of Republicans said they opposed abolishing the 15-year-old agency, while Democrats said they were evenly split on the issue, with roughly 44 percent in favor of abolishing it and 44 percent saying it should remain.

The Reuters poll consulted American adults throughout June and July this year. 

Reuters asked 2,989 respondents about Medicare for all, 5,339 about free college tuition, and 7,737 about abolishing ICE. 

The results have margins of error of 2 percentage points for the Medicare for all and free college tuition questions. 

The margin of error for the question about abolishing ICE is 1 percentage point.

I did not know those things, and they are important

Sanders' Medicare for All plan would involve no cost sharing, no copays, no premiums for covered individuals.

All medical services would be covered at 100%.

And adopting the plan, which socializes the health insurance business and not medicine, would actually save the government trillions it would otherwise pay on health care.

Koch-backed study finds ‘Medicare for All’ would save U.S. government trillions

An estimated cost of $32.6 trillion over 10 years is less than the US government would spend over the next 10 years under the current system.

. . . .

Sanders’ proposed single-payer plan would be free at the point of service, and would not include any cost-sharing — that is, no co-pays or premiums. 

Under his plan, taxes would replace those often high costs, which currently are shouldered by patients.

Research from March of this year found that the present system has left 15.5 percent of adults between 19 and 64 without health insurance, while more than a quarter of lower-income families are uninsured. 

Monday’s study concluded that not only would Medicare for All provide insurance for the millions of Americans currently without coverage, but it would also save the government $2.054 trillion over the next decade.

. . . .

Ultimately, Sanders’ Medicare for All plan would provide comprehensive coverage for all residents of the United States, including primary and preventative care, emergency and hospital services, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, substance abuse and mental health services, as well as pediatrics, laboratory, and diagnostic services. 

The plan also guarantees dental, vision, audiology, and abortion coverage.

. . . .

The point is this: The resistance to single-payer, especially among establishment Democrats, is really just resistance to changing the status quo. 

The Democratic party is supposed to be the one that believes government can and should help people. 

Single-payer, as Monday’s study confirmed, is the best way to do that — while also saving the government trillions of dollars!

Medicare for all?

Phooey.

Fix Medicare, first.

Push it out to all and the pressure to gut its benefits and raise both the premiums and the patient share of costs even further will be irresistible.

The undeserving sick and socialized health insurance

You want the government deciding you don't deserve proper medical attention?

What, because that million it would cost could be better spent in a tax cut disguised as a program to straighten teeth on a thousand kids (the kids are already getting their teeth fixed)?

Medicare for all means the government has a monopoly on the health insurance business and will absolutely start making calls like that.

Already there are plenty of people whining that money spent on health care for the old, livers for ex-alcoholics, hearts and lungs for ex-smokers and the like is money spent on the undeserving sick.

Whines that fold in wonderfully with the agenda of Republicans as tax cutters and saboteurs of government, providing softening up propaganda for efforts to cut costs by cutting coverage.

Recall how much they, led by such heroes of ordinary people as the Bozo in the White House and Paul Ryan, bellyached about Obamacare's coverage requirements for policies to be sold through the exchanges or qualify for subsidies.

And that they already have insured no government program will pay for an abortion, and have tried their best to cut out coverage even for birth control, all allegedly in deference to the moral sensitivities of Evangelicals and Catholic nuns.

It's a lot easier to resist such pressures when public health insurance programs aren't providing coverage for most Americans, let alone all of them.

Create a socialist monopoly in health insurance and just watch how fast secularist Democrats will join the Christian clericalists of the GOP in deciding the devil can take the old, the weak, the most vulnerable, the most beset and needy, along with all those slutty women baby-killers.

And they will all the while dress up the whole sorry, greedy business as an heroic effort to preserve scarce resources for the young and the deserving, for the children, for God's sake.

Oh, the moral ago of the New York Times.

These are liberals talking like this, people.

Injecting Drugs Can Ruin a Heart. How Many Second Chances Should a User Get?