How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class?

Sure there are decisions to be made but the current crop of Fascists that are the modern Republican Party want the decisions to be made by the insurance companies and not the patient and their doctor.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Define "fairly."One mans idea of fair is another mans idea of famine. Who should determine what is fair? Is the concept of fairness applied to the population -at-large and then divided by that same number to arrive at my fairness quotient?You cant get blood out of a turnip, nor can you get taxes out of a family on food stamps.

That is a very fair question.I think fair can be defined as having an equal shot at the "American Dream". A fair wage should allow you to own a house, own a car that isn't in the shop every 3rd month, not have to worry about getting sick, put your kids through university, and retire at a feasible age (65 or so).In my opinion, jobs offering a wage that will allow you to do this are becoming rarer and rarer with time. Not only are the actual wages of the middle class faltering, but the costs of housing, healthcare, and education are increasing at rates much higher than inflation. Now the children of the baby boomers (my generation) are being told that Social Security will not be there when they hit retirement age. So in addition to the stagnation of wages we have to yank out an additional percentage of our income so that we can retire at a decent age, if ever. I think I have already mentioned the cost of university and healthcare, so I will only mention it in passing here.What I started this thread out asking is how Republican policies will reverse this trend. From everything I have read thus far, Republicans don't want to reverse this trend. In fact, they want to keep tipping it towards the most wealthy and away from the middle class.

I think the 'American Dream' needs to be thrown out. It is worthless, and a danger to the peace and security of the planet. I don't think owning a house should be a goal just for the sake of owning a house. Public transportation needs to be entirely reworked so that the vast majority of folk living in cities and towns no longer need to rely on personal transportation.If a house is owned, a very small one, like the size of a moderate mobile home, certainly will suffice for almost any family; cars that are owned can be simple, compact, and get good gas mileage.I don't know where Americans got this idea that everything they own needs to be sprawling and pimpin', but it's absolutely disgusting. My best guess is that they were brainwashed into thinking it... probably as children.Jon

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Love your enemies!

I would suggest just the opposite. When the middle class is denied opportunities like ownership of property, education, and well being the result is civil unrest and a lack of security. Public transportation is simply not a viable option outside of population centers. I do regret that suburbs became the norm. Building up instead of out would have been better in the long run. However, the damage is done at this point. Also, there are plenty of people who live in rural areas where public transportation is simply too expensive for the number of people it would service. I agree. I would put more stress on the quality of the housing than the square footage. I live in a smaller city where a lot of people live in houses with less than 1,000 square feet and small lots. I really like these types of neighborhoods. However, they aren't that much cheaper than the 1,500+ square foot homes in the outlying areas. And you will notice that I never advocated this anywhere in my post. What I am advocating is some stability and an ability to supply an education to our children. It doesn't need to be austere, but certainly not pimpin'.

That's really not true at all. Currently it seems nonviable, but that is only because we choose to make it so. One solution would be to teach people the truth: that personal property ownership is itself a form of civil unrest. In the system's current state, the result of increased education would most certainly be extreme civil unrest; only the ignorant dimly sheep about as the wool is pulled over their eyes. Correct; that comment was not intended to be directly squarely at you.Jon

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Love your enemies!

Hi marc,Bless you and your fine display of wrong. Let's look at a few that maybe haven't been thoroughly refuted yet. Yes, indeed. Lower costs, universal coverage, better quality health care. Or shouldn't those be considerations in discussing health care reform? I am fascinated to learn how exercising and eating more vegetables is going to prevent geriatric cartilage degeneration or bone tumors. Please enlighten me.Is that the Tea Party theory, that the poor are just lazy and wouldn't need health care if they just went to the gym more and shopped at the organic farmers market? How unfair that CEO's have to give up some of their profits to those ungrateful workers and actually pay them. How dare they! It's the CEO's that do the real work, after all. Employees are just freeloaders.In the real world, benefits like health insurance are counted as part of an employee's compensation package. It's their money, not the company's. Taking it away and keeping it as a profit would be tantamount to cutting everyone's pay. Of course, any company is free to offer any wage and benefits package they like to their workers (just as long as it's above that pesky minimum wage). If they want to increase their profits and cut their workers pay, they have every right to do so. Whether anyone will want to work for them if they do cut 30% or whatever of everyone's compensation package is another matter.No, wait. In this wrecked economy, I'm sure that they'd still find people desperate enough to work for less and less. I cry for the insurance companies. Hear me weep. I would have thought that part of the "free market" was that corporations were on their own to either make money or go out of business. Are you saying that insurance companies have a right to make a profit?Do any of you actually deal with insurance companies? I do on a daily basis. I'm a solo health care practitioner and believe me, I have to fight them for every dime. Insurance companies are in the business of preventing people from getting health care. The more claims they can dispute, the more they deny coverage, the more money they make. And this is who you think should be in charge of health care in this country?And are you equally upset at mandatory automobile insurance and business insurance and the like? I suppose that they could, but what real reason do you have to think so, other than a general hatred of government?

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John LydonReality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven ColbertI never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill

Because in a new government health care system, there are no unchangeable, set-in-concrete guidelines that the government has to follow. It will decide in it’s own best interests, and it will change its mind and flip flop its decisions all it wants, just like other government agencies like the IRS, EPA, and FMCSA, to name only a few. Yes. I think many people, often younger people in the U.S. without health insurance, do tend to think twice before doing something physically risky. It’s a personal responsibility thing, a self reliance thing. I think it’s a problem because chances are excellent that the government will feel entitled to make the decision on what to do with it. The problem is, the insurance industry isn’t 100% free markets anymore, not since government requires some types of insurance, or since some corruption is involved in the insurance business today. For example, insurance rates skyrocketed in the few years after 9-11-2001, for the trucking industry, and others I’m sure. The insurance companies were forcefully making up for their losses. Which, like social security, are heading towards the cliff of financial disaster. So the slippery slope is VERY real? Dr. Adequate calls it a fallacy. Do you disagree with him on that?

With social security, medicare, Medicaid, often free emergency room service, not so well these days. It worked out better in past generations, before these programs existed. Yes, because the U.S. is currently saddled with governmental burdens that other nations don’t even think about. Its multi-billion dollar legal system is one, and its obsession with a worship of the environment is another. As one example, Donald Trump (one of the few political wannabe’s who knows something about building) has been recently pointing out the differences in U.S. vs China’s abilities to build. China makes decisions overnight, the U.S. often has to wait years, or decades, for self-serving environmentalists to do their work.

Yes, but as I’m sure you know, private company pay in the U.S. isn’t as costly as government employee pay/benefits. The government likes money. You’ve never noticed the government making extra effort to grab money from somebody? The U.S. government is in far more financial trouble than any private company. Any private company as financially inept as the U.S. government would long be out of business by now. But it’s still in existence, and it really needs money. Collectively bargain? With the federal government? I own a heavy truck, I’m afraid the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) never asks my opinion on anything. The government knows that most people aren’t sick at any given time, and that most people aren’t going to be interested in what decisions the government is making about their healthcare. It’s that thing called the slippery slope, just like you described with the next step would be decreasing costs at hospitals, meaning hospital administrators receiving more commands from government. The next step seems to about always be more government commands. If you and the Democrats want to change America from its basic foundations of the 1700’s, I’d suggest you repeal and replace the Constitution, not pretend that you’re following it. People still have two arms and two legs just like the 1700’s, they still have problems, the world still had tyrants, on and on. Human desires and abilities don’t really change over the centuries. No, I never said we shouldn’t try. We should make more effort to keep them in check, to not trust them too far. U.S. foundations are largely about not trusting government. Of course that’s true, but my beliefs in why that is differ from yours. The prescription drug promotion and sales process is obscene in the U.S. today, and it was practically non-existent only a few decades ago. I blame corruption and current government involvement, you blame free markets. That’s where we are. My earlier post addressed that. Free, responsible people should be capable of providing themselves with routine living expenses, including an insurance process for their personal health. According to the constitution, it’s the U.S. governments job to post roads, because that involves a public unification that goes beyond one’s own personal affairs. At least as many, if not more, than could 100 years ago. Not today’s high tech medicine, but at least as much pain relief and comfort. One of the main problems with this whole controversy is that much of today’s high tech medicine was often developed by the rich, for the rich. Today’s entitlement mentality has too many people thinking that just because something exists somewhere, they’re automatically entitled to it. It’s not reality in a free society, and never has been.Government healthcare isn’t going to solve everyone’s health problems. All the government promise and implication of a paradise on earth if they’re granted enough power and control over common peoples lives is an illusion.

It’s the liberty theory, that the government isn’t going to be able to provide a paradise on earth no matter how much power and control over our lives we allow them to have.I'm fascinated by how so many people think the government will cure all problems if they're just given enough power, no matter how many times history shows how it ends in disaster. I cry for those that the insurance companies will target, to make up for their losses, just like after 9-11-2001. And the government will be better? The government won’t worry about preventing people from getting health care? They’ll gladly toss around the money required to make us all healthy? They’ll never dispute and deny? Do you ever actually deal with the government? In some ways, yes. The multi-billion dollar legal industry is behind a lot of it. My (and others) past experiences with other government agencies like the IRS, EPA, and FMCSA. It goes along perfectly with the descriptions and warnings of big government that are contained in U.S. foundings.

The government is certainly not to be trusted; but the insurance companies are to be trusted even less.In my state, Minnesota Care is government-run health insurance providing for the poor. It is run and funded by the government. Premiums (if they exist) are low and dependent on income. Copays are low, and there are laws preventing service providers from refusing people who have not been able to pay their first copay.The program is established enough that almost any doctor/hospital/etc. in the state will accept it for payment (were Minnesota Care the only insurer, everybody would accept it). Minnesota Care uses a special system that determines the actual cost of treatment (as opposed to the billed cost) and only pays the service providers for the actual cost (were it not for the greedy insurance companies, the actual cost and billed cost would be the same).Overall it is an excellent program. If the U.S. could move to offering a universal program of such a sort to people, it would go a long way to helping the poor get access to necessary medical treatments. Again, it's not perfectfar from it, but it is certainly better than the do-nothing approach favored by the current Thuglican party and its deluded membership masses. That's not even an issue; even if the government spent all the money on hookers and booze, that would still not be a reason to oppose a universal health care program that provided the poor and needy with access to necessary medical treatments. This is because the insurance industry has proven that it cannot be trusted to do what is right, legal, and just. Were they willing to do the right thing, they wouldn't need the government to force them to do it. Because the richest Americans have bribed Congress to avoid having to pay into Social Security. Were their income properly taxed, the program would be fine. I don't think you understand what the slippery slope fallacy is:

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Wikipedia on the Slippery Slope Fallacy:

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The heart of the slippery slope fallacy lies in abusing the intuitively appreciable transitivity of implication, claiming that A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D and so on, until one finally claims that A leads to Z. While this is formally valid when the premises are taken as a given, each of those contingencies needs to be factually established before the relevant conclusion can be drawn. Slippery slope fallacies occur when this is not donean argument that supports the relevant premises is not fallacious and thus isn't a slippery slope fallacy.

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Often proponents of a "slippery slope" contention propose a long series of intermediate events as the mechanism of connection leading from A to B. The "camel's nose" provides one example of this: once a camel has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow. In this sense the slippery slope resembles the genetic fallacy, but in reverse.

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Jon

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Love your enemies!

I don't see how that answers the question I asked you, but traditionally what you're talking about are called "laws." Also not what I asked. What I asked was, do insured people, in your view, act more recklessly? I'm asking you about a causative relationship between "owning insurance" and "reckless behavior." Isn't getting insurance actually a really prudent thing to do? Why do you say that? When corporations reduce labor costs - or, labor costs decline for some other reason - they keep the profits. Why would it work any other way? Especially in the profit-worshipping US? You're right! What a hugely market-distorting, government free-ride these health insurance companies have been getting! Surely they would have gone out of business ages ago in a free market, right? It's long past time we got rid of these lumbering dinosaurs.Congratulations on making an incredibly compelling free-market case for single-payer health coverage. Only because medicine is getting more expensive. That's happening in private markets, too. Obviously, single-payer has to come with mechanisms to control the growth of health service expenditures. For that matter - not going to single-payer, or going to whatever your free-market wet dream would be, also has to come with mechanisms to control the growth of health service expenditures. There's nothing slippery about this slope - moving to a full single-payer system for everyone is going to take concerted political action, with all the vested business interests lined up against it, and against your health. It's going to be a long struggle, I suspect, but lucky for you and me, it's largely inevitable.

Stop. Just stop right there.NO ONE IS ASKING THE GOVERNMENT TO CREATE A PARADISE ON EARTH. Where do you even get that? Is anyone here asking for cable TV and Tivo for everyone, 151 channels? Or free legal counsel for all? Or government laundry services to come to your house and wash your sheets for you? All-you-can-eat ice cream on Sunday?Remember the General Welfare clause in the Constitution? You could go all the way back and start arguing with Alexander Hamilton about it, but it's well established by now that Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes at its discretion for the purpose of promoting the general welfare of the people.The concept of what that general welfare consists of has changed and expanded over time, and that's been for the good. For example, the Founders couldn't have foreseen the hell on earth that was the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the previous century, but do you want to argue that the Pure Food and Drug Act, that at least minimizes the amount of rat droppings in your Big Mac, is a bad thing? Do you want to get rid of the Fair Labor Standards Act so 12 year-olds can start putting in 80 hour work weeks again? I suspect that you just might, but I'd like to hear you say it.In 1783 state of the art medicine in the western world was leech-craft and mustard plasters. Times have changed. Medicine can do a lot more, and health care has gotten more complicated and more expensive. No one is asking for free hair implants and boob jobs on demand. But giving its citizens access to a basic level of affordable health care falls well within the definition of general welfare, as it is understood in this world today. Just as it's better to have an educated citizenry, it's also better to have a healthier citizenry. The rest of the civilized world understands this. It's just the American plutocracy that keeps feeding you Tea Party dupes nonsense about how making sure that everyone can get a yearly check-up is the same thing as Hitler sending grandma to the ovens. The current system serves no-one except insurance companies and their stock-holders.I'll say it again: Insurance companies do not ever provide health care. They are explicitly in the business of preventing people from getting health care. So the solution to insurance companies taking advantage of people (sorta like how hyenas "take advantage" of baby gazelles) is ... more economic freedom for insurance companies? I forgot that, in the world of crazy, all government workers do all day is surf internet porn, light up cigars with $20 bills, and write regulations that put honest farmers out of work. In the real world, government can generally do a good job with a lot of functions. I would be the first to admit that it's not perfect. Government is operated by human beings (and also Congress-critters). But I would go so far as to say that most of the things that are screwed up with how government does things stem from how much it's beholden to the interests of corporate America. For the most part it works. For less than 50 cents you can send a letter from Alaska to Alabama. Try getting FedEx to do that.Despite what you keep asserting, the fact is that a government sponsored single payer system would be obligated to provide affordable health care, in the same way that the fire department is obligated to put out fires and the Transportation Security Administration is obligated to strip you down to your underwear to make sure you don't have any tweezers before letting you on a plane. Wait, that last one wasn't so good. Anyway, government is far more answerable to the public than corporations, who are purely motivated by profit and are answerable only to the shareholders. And again, the answer to unrestrained corporate greed is ... fewer restrictions? Do you wonder why people in other countries aren't as sue-happy as Americans are? Law firms see a profit in suing insurance companies, insurance companies raise premiums on health-care providers, health care becomes more and more expensive and out of reach for the average citizen. Who makes out in the end? Law firms and insurance companies. Take private insurance out of the equation, and I suspect that that whirlpool of piranhas will calm down quite a bit. What exactly has the EPA done to you, except try to hold down the amount of acid rain dissolving the forests, to not have quite so many open strip-mines, and to keep paper-mills from dumping quite so much toxic waste in the river? Oh my, some companies could be making a lot more money if they just didn't have to control how much pollution they poured out into the environment. You apparently don't, but I believe that a few limits on profits is a small price to pay if it at least slows down the process of turning this country into a smoldering, treeless toxic dump.Corporations have grown incredibly short-sighted. They'll gladly burn down the neighborhood and leave everyone else homeless, as long as it makes them a buck today.Edited by ZenMonkey, : Changed one link to a better source.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John LydonReality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven ColbertI never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill

Well I appreciate seeing fresh opinions here so thanks for sharing.I'm a middle class property owner who's on the right side of the political spectrum, but I'm not sure I should call myself a Republican.There's a lot that I disagree with you on, but some of it did make sense. I have a lot of catching up here before I can meaningfully reply... and by the time I get done, it'll prolly be closed