While I love some of his ideas (like Congressional term limits), it's his stance on education aligned with how elections went in Indiana that scares the hell out of me.
Holcomb won governor and was Pence's underling. Pence notoriously undermined the super of education in Indiana. She was in turn beaten by a former district super who said all the right things but was backed by Chartel House, a charter school behind the A-F school grading scandal a few years ago.

The attack on public education in Indiana seems destined to continue as money gets filtered away to charters, who have mixed reviews, at best, here.

Trump wants to slash public school funding to support school choice. School choice in and of itself doesn't scare me. I'm the principal of a school that just won a National Blue Ribbon Award, but it's the funding that leaves my Title I school (nearly 70% free/reduced lunch) to go to allow people to attend private schools, charters, etc. that worries me.

Sadly, my Title I aides backed Trump. If current predictions hold, and Title budgets are slashed by as much as 1/3, then I may be forced into letting those same ladies go when the cuts hit.

Sounds like tort and malpractice reform would be needed?

No, I just think Trump might either do something to get himself in hot water or get tired of the whole thing. It's not his bag.

Trump may preserve a couple ACA items

President-elect Trump willing to keep parts of ObamaCare | Fox News

TPP is toast, possibly NAFTA. I like more scrutiny on foreign acquisitions of US companies.

Trump will quit TPP in first days - POLITICO

I'd be very surprised if the China stuff happens. Every candidate speaks tough on China and then backs off when they get the job and see the potential damage of a cold war with the Chinese.

And the Republicans can resort to reconciliation to get around the filibuster, if they don't just nuke it entirely.

We haven't seen a bill yet, but let's not pretend that privatizing Medicare is so onerous that the only way a Republican Congress can make it happen is by getting 8+ Democrats on board.


"Moderate" Republicans don't really exist as a going concern at this point. Most of them either got primaried out by Tea Party candidates the last 6 years or so, or else moved to the right to block out a primary challenge.

The same is true on the other side of the aisle - the Blue Dog Democrats aren't as prevalent as they used to be because a lot of those Tea Party districts decided that a freshman Tea Party Republican > incumbent conservative Democrats.

So what you have is a Congress that is fairly polarized. That's always been true in the House, but more so especially these days. The Senate is trending that way, also.

The China thing would have been worth doing years ago when they were devaluing their currency. Not sure there is a point in doing it now that they aren't.

And I'm all for being a little tougher on China in regards to some of their policies that hurt us. But I hope he brings in some economic minds that are aware it's not 2010 anymore.

Still haven't figured out how we managed -- as a nation -- to screw up the meaning of "insurance" by turning it from a gamble against major / serious health problems/costs versus "oh it's supposed to pay for everything".

Wasn't like that in my childhood (circa 70s) so exactly when did it get stood on its head? I've never been much on running to doctors so I honestly don't know that I saw the transition take place in person.

Probably whenever "everything" got into the "serious" price range.

(Wife got imaging done last month when she had kidney stones. That by itself was like $500. And I think that was required both before and after surgery.)

But which came first? I mean, did prices rise & drive it there, or did insurance become more & more a "anything & everything" and drive prices up.

And, just to be clear, I'm legit asking. I grew up in an era when, say, your standard office visit stuff never involved insurance. You showed up, paid your bill (even if that meant making multiple payments). I know it shifted obviously but I don't actually remember when/how that happened.

A trade war would be disastrous. Like 2nd Great Recession disastrous. So hopefully he doesn't go that far.

The rapid advances in technology, drugs, and treatment are a big part of how we got here. Not saying that's 100% of the reason, but I'd say it contributes 'bigly'.

I think there are a lot of reasons why prices went up. One I'd argue is technology. We screen for a number of diseases now that we didn't in the past. So colonoscopies, mammograms, blood test, and so on are now up. We have vaccines for diseases that we didn't decades ago. Drugs to help with things like diabetes, high cholesterol and so on. MRIs, CAT scans, etc that didn't exist 50 years ago. Our life expectancy has gone up over the decades as well as quality of life so it's tough to argue against these advancements in my opinion.

Then you have the AMA limiting the amount of doctors which causes prices to go up. Drug companies creating monopolies in a closed market which increases prices (you can't price shop from other countries). Doctors buying their own equipment (X-Ray, CAT scan, etc) and overusing it to make money. Lawyers abusing the system by suing for everything. And people who are taking their kids in each time they come down with the sniffles. I think it's a bunch of things all balled into one.

To your complaint, perhaps we should have different tiers for insurance. One tier is strictly for major medical issues. Things that are deemed to be life threatening if untreated. So if you have a heart attack, you're covered. An infection, you're covered. But if you tear your ACL, it doesn't cover the reconstruction surgery. That'd be on you since you can live with a torn ACL, it's just a quality of life issue. This insurance would be much cheaper I'd imagine.

I still say it's too complicated and would prefer a Medicare for all with some major reforms to Medicare.

The left is certainly screwed if that happens I guess. Perhaps GOP has been playing 4-D chess all along.

Doesn't malpractice insurance fit somewhere into the rising costs?

Something needs to be done to blunt China. I thought TPP was a good step but I'm open to any other ideas that Trump has. Unfortunately, I'm sure there will be consequences and adverse effects

Not an expert by any means, but I've read some on this for some other reasons. There are no definitive answers, but medical malpractice claims and payouts have actually decreased since 2000.

Med Mal insurance premiums are a mixed bag, and doctors in more rural areas seem to be hit more (which makes sense...less competition). The prevailing theory is that malpractice seems to generate indirect costs (doctors practicing more defensive medicine and ordering an extra test or something), but these costs are tough to measure or allocate directly to malpractice issues.

???
Single payer was never ever proposed by Obama.
Single payer was never on the table.

Obamacare was based on the Republican proposal (RomneyCare) to try to get some Republican support.

The cost of medical school has risen at an astronomical rate, as well.

Here is a 4-year old article with a table that demonstrates well: https://www.aamc.org/download/296002...bvol12_no2.pdf

Blunt China in what way?

Single payer was never proposed, but the public option was. It would've bypassed the states (and thus avoided the Medicaid gap that screwed so many people), while still retaining employer based and private coverage. In the end, they didn't have enough votes to get it through and had to drop it from the final bill.

No, it was not.
It was traded away from the get go to get industry support.
Obama lied about it as long as he could, but he traded it away from the start.


NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option | The Huffington Post


It took so long to pass Obamacare because all the Demecrats saw how bad it was and did not want to be tied to it.

This shows that Lieberman opposed to public option from the beginning. Without Lieberman, they never had the 60 votes to break a filibuster.

Lieberman: I'll block vote on Reid plan - POLITICO

And this article calls into question the findings of yours...

Obama never secretly killed the public option. It’s a myth. - The Washington Post

Obamacare passed with 51 votes via resention.
Lieberman's vote did not mater.

Of course ther was only a only confirmed that there was a deal on cost with the hospitals.
And what was that deal and how would it be enforced?

Not initially. It first passed 60-39 and then came back from the House with some changes limited to financing that could be passed by a 51 vote reconciliation. Most of the initial language, though, was dependent on the first 60 vote passage.

Please show me any evidance of this: passed 60-39
Truly, it would change my opinion.

U.S. Senate: Roll Call Vote

Is that it?

That's it. There was first a 60-39 vote to break the filibuster, then the exact same margin to pass the bill. After that it went to the House and there were some funding changes, so it came back to the Senate. Because the changes were limited, it was then passed through reconciliation, which eliminated the possibility of a filibuster.

I honestly don't either - I went about 15 years starting with college where I probably went to the doctor about 3 times. Didn't pay too much attention to childbirth and kid checkup prices.

Could you acctualy point to anything relevant?
Having lived through it I know ther is no "there": "There".

A lot of it came with insurance companies realizing it was cheaper to pay for preventive care rather than wait for people to get sick. Annual office visits and urgent care clinics and the like are cost saving compared to other options. There are also a number of laws from state to state, and federally that mandated care, but a lot of it was driven by insurance companies and employers looking to save money. Half of healthcare costs are run up by 5% of the population.

I'm not sure what you're asking for. That was the roll call for the initial passage of the Affordable Care Act in the Senate.

From Marine Le Pen:


And I remember when saying Trump had turned the GOP into a white nationalist party like Le Pen's was considered outrageous.

Only budget items can be passed through reconciliation. Since ACA had more than budget items, they needed 60 votes to pass it. So they dropped the public option to get the 60 votes. The house passed their version which had differences in the financing provisions.

Once Scott Brown won the Mass election, the Dems no longer had 60 votes to even pass an amended version of the ACA, much less a public option. They either had to let the ACA die or approve the House changes, which they were able to do via reconciliation.

It would be funny if Trump just said "fuck it, lets do universal healthcare". He was a big fan of it back in the day. I mean Dems would be on board and his supporters don't care what his policies are.

So... you said something false (which you've said before, mind and been shown false). It was argued to be false. You asked for proof. Proof was given. Then you refuse to acknowledge the proof? Is that it, then?

Why should we ever listen to you again (I mean I know to take you with a massive grain of salt the first time we had this discussion on how the ACA was passed)?

You are completely right that the TPP was partially done to isolate China economically. Which makes it funny that we have someone who is adamantly against TPP, but then complains about China's economic games. The TPP was probably the best way to get China to knock it off and come to the table.

Chief of staff seems to be between insider Priebus vs outsider Bannon. The logical choice is Priebus but who knows.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/12/politi...aff/index.html

Here's hoping he has another plan.

For me, if I were just elected, I;d look at some moderate democrats who are very competent and could help out, and consider them for my Cabinet, like Senator Joe Manchin from WV, as a good example, of an outsider who came to DC to change it and was very, very frustrated at the lack of working across the aisle. I don't know if he'd say yes due to Trump being Trump, but Jim Webb also attracts me for Defense, since he was Under-Secretary of the Navy for Reagan. I do like Christie for Attorney General, rather than Giulai, and that guy is bulldog, which is what you want from eh AG. Carson for SG or maybe HHS Secretary makes sense as well. Sessions is fine. But I think Newt is a bad call for the Cabinet. He helped to shut down the government, has a huge distrust and disdainment for the bureaucracy, and is definitely a Washington Insider. I don't want him running a Department. For me that would be a non-starter.


EDIT - I think Manchin would do it for sure. He's a patriot who believes there are certain things you do because that's you role. For example, he just called out Reid for going against Trump and Trump supporters recently, now theat the election is over: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ry-reid-absol/ Manchin is a "You respect the office, the institutions, etc" kind of guy. He'd serve.

Several problems there in practice though.
First, unless Trump wants to find a movement forming against him from within before he even takes office, don't pick a (D) for anything except being far far away.

The next to last thing you'd wanna do is remove a (relatively?) moderate (D) from Congress. Same reason I dislike picks like Sessions, it's already a cesspool of uselessness, why remove anything that has a redeeming quality at all?


And in the case of Newt, who I don't have much (any) faith in after some of his moderate repositionings in recent years, I'm thinking he might be about right for the job anyway. After years of empty suits in the role, it needs a genuine S.O.B. for a while, and on that score he certainly qualifies.

Preibus appears to be Chief Of Staff.

Probably the logical choice

Not so fast. Bannon named "Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor" and apparently will have equal power.

Preibus being used as a front? "Look we're going to be a reasonable Administration Bannon will have co-equal power pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

And my guess is Bannon has no interest in managing the day to day BS of the job.

Or as the social secretary.