> the over 50% of Americans who voted in favour of their current situation
Small nitpick: while Trump won the popular vote, he did not earn over 50% of the votes. There were enough third-party votes that he won with only 49.8%.
Perhaps the insurer should defer to the doctor, who is not only generally an expert at treating cancer but also much more familiar with the details of the patient.
It baffles me why people are OK with insurers dictating care to doctors rather than the other way around.
The problem is the doctors have a big financial incentive to do something. Whether it's useful or not is secondary. Likewise, the patients want to do something, it's a source of hope.
Remember the big flap about bone marrow transplants for advanced breast cancer? End result: a successful transplant meant you lived longer, but the risks of the transplant offset that, there was no survival advantage.
This is not to say that there are no improper denials. It's pretty obvious some companies use red tape, and I suspect some reviewers are either being held to unreasonable standards or being overworked, resulting in deliberately lost paperwork. (Remember the scandal with the VA dropping patient visits to make the numbers look better?)
And reading the article a few things stand out to me:
1) I can't find the name of the drug being denied.
2) She gives the stat that 49 million claims are denied but 0.2% were appealed--is that truly evidence of wrongdoing, or is it evidence of the insurance companies providing the no that doctors are afraid to give patients? And how many are entirely legitimate (my wife had a denial--right drug, right digits, wrong form, wrong dose. Clearly a human selected the wrong thing from a list)?
3) She talks about lives that would supposedly be saved by Medicare for All--never mind that that would collapse our system as there is considerable cost shifting from Medicare to those with commercial insurance.
You don't update standard of care by not trying new treatments, and insurance companies also have financial incentives. It turns out they are the opposite of the incentives of their customers and the doctors.
Rather than worrying about major world powers killing a large portion of the global population in a nuclear war, I'd worry more about the ultra-wealthy - i.e., the people with enough wealth where they can call up a world leader and expect to meet them in short order.
Given the types of people we overwhelmingly find among this group, once AI and robotics technologies reach the point where production can be fully automated, they'll no longer have use for the rabble. A large population of underclass people then becomes nothing but a threat to be exterminated.
Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that's not something which will happen in my lifetime.
You do understand the cost of what you're asking, right?
Not using AI weapons is exactly the same as asking soldiers to go up against AI weapons without having AI weapons themselves. Assuming other actors around the world will not suddenly agree to peace, that's what you're asking.
Russia is already using AI targeting against Ukraine, even Ukrainian civilians probably (and even Russia at least pretends they don't fire on civilians, and China already provides Iran with rocket fuel ... why not AI? We can't stop this)
Since asking soldiers to go up against AI targeting without AI is not a reasonable thing to ask, this will not happen. AI will be armed.
As for diplomacy, the UN (general assembly, not the SC) has already had 3 chances to go after use of AI targeting. They have refused 3 times out of 3. Or to put it differently: a majority of the world's states wants to use AI weapons or at the very least wants to allow them.
That interpretation seems... odd. You seem to be implying that if your policy is to give everyone a tax credit (i.e. give them money) if you win then you're not allowed to tell anyone about it.
He's also stated that he can issue the money without help from Congress, which directly contradicts the idea that it's harmless bloviating about voting in a 120th Congress to implement specific policy:
> He literally says he'll cut a check for $5,000 for every adult american if the Republicans win both the House and Senate in the midterms.
Which is exactly why it doesn't apply. The money would go to even the people who didn't vote for him.
The law you're referring to is about paying people for votes. Someone giving their own money to voters who can prove they cast a ballot in a particular way.
Saying that you're going to have taxpayer-funded transfer payments is ordinary politics. If your interpretation was right then proposing to increase social assistance programs would be vote buying in violation of that law.
I feel it worth pointing out an important distinction between censorship coming from "the left" vs. that coming from "the right".
On the left, when someone uses a racial or sexist epithet, for example, the reaction is to exert social pressure against that individual. Social media escalates that to a giant dogpile, which, in some cases, results in some extreme cases where the individual loses their job in addition to becoming a social pariah.
However, all of this is merely an exercise in free speech and free association. The person in question suffers no legal consequences for their speech. Instead, it is a large number of onlookers who decide they disagree with the individual and choose to counter him/her with their own speech and/or dissolve any association they have with him/her.
I won't say I condone how little it takes for the crowd to react sometimes or the extent to which they do, but everything is well within First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
In contrast, when something the right doesn't like is discovered, they take legal action. Books are removed from public and school libraries. Laws are written to target anyone who is guilty of the offensive speech (e.g., Florida's Don't Say Gay law). More recently, it's been popular to write these laws such that the offending individuals are opened to civil suits by third parties rather than suffer jail time, as a loophole trying to avoid the Supreme Court striking them down as blatant First Amendment violations.
> On the left, when someone uses a racial or sexist epithet, for example, the reaction is to exert social pressure against that individual. Social media escalates that to a giant dogpile
Not sure it’s correct to characterize that as a reaction of only the “left” - case in point, the reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death.
Yet paradoxically, being old is nearly a requirement for political office.
Biden was the oldest president in history, and with his re-election, Trump will become the oldest president in history should he live out his term.
The average age of the 119th Congress overall is 59 years old, with the House averaging 57 and the Senate averaging 64. For comparison, the average age of the US as a whole is just under 39.
This is probably one of the largest reasons the country is in the state it's in: most of those in power won't live long enough to see the consequences of the policies they enact, so they don't give a damn.
It’s partly by design—the word senate shares its root with the word senex “old man” (whence also senile, etc.) because it’s literally a council of elders. That’s what the Roman one was and what the US constitution (among others) was attempting to emulate.
Partly, though, it’s a bit more interesting than that[1]. Wikipedia has an interesting chart[2] titled “Lifespan of each United States president”, which shows that in modern-ish times, the generation from which US presidents come is sticky: you get three presidents born ca. 1855, then one born ca. 1865, two ca. 1875, three from the late 1880s, four(!) from the 1910s (starting with “young” JFK), Carter/Reagan/Bush Sr. oscillate between the 1910s and 1920s, then again four from the 1940s (starting with “young” Clinton) only interrupted by “young” Obama (born 1961). (I could start my recounting earlier and it would still work.) Trump and Biden appear abnormal if you look at their ages, but if you look at their birth years instead they are simply a backslide, after Obama, to the generation of Clinton and Bush Jr.
What does appear true is that generations hold onto their power for longer and longer before the snap transition to the next eligible generation happens. Longer life expectancy due to better medical care seems like a perfectly satisfactory explanation for that.
[1] I first read about this idea a few years ago and I don’t remember where, so I’ll need to attempt my own explanation. Sorry.
For some quick and easy evidence, you could look at the history of the Post Office.
USPS has always been the poster child for efficient and effective government agencies. Despite claims otherwise, the agency still manages to deliver letters and other postage to areas private industry like FedEx, UPS, et. al. would never touch.
Unfortunately, over the years, Republican Congresses and Presidents have repeatedly attempted to sabotage the agency. Some recent(-ish) examples:
* The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required USPS to create a fund to pay the cost of post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future.
* The Republican-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy overseeing the removal of 711 sorting machines as well as a number of public mailboxes in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which, due to Covid, was expected to have larger-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. Not only did it cause significant concern regarding mail-in ballots, but it also resulted in significant delays and backlogs in general mail delivery.
You were not clear at all, I am asking for clarification. I thought that `atmavatar's question was clearly in response to your statement and you are saying it is not.
Assume I am ignorant to the context of this conversation if need be. What were you referencing when you made your claim to needing evidence?
Do they act on their beliefs or merely parrot them?
I ask because I've known people who were shocked at what took place 2021-01-06 but who proudly voted to re-elect Trump.
Today isn't much different: talk to a conservative voter who complains about the tariffs, Iran war, etc. and ask them whether it would be enough for them to vote Democrat, and the answer is near universally no. Lots of people have performative outrage because they're supposed to be outraged at what's going on, but the truth is that there's no line the Republican party can cross which would make them switch votes. Exceptions to this rule are still few and far between as far as I can gather.
Elections are won and lost by the people who don't vote so not voting for Trump still counts as a win.
Most politics is sold as tribal. "Our leader" and "Our team" are not the same thing. If "Our leader" is a disappointment, "Our team" can still be the good guys who need to do some house clearing, introduce some fresh blood, and all will be well again, etc.
Reality in the US is most politics is billionaire-funded. Trump didn't just happen, and he certainly didn't pull himself into the top job through his own efforts. He was groomed for decades before being crowned.
That's the level of corruption most of the population never sees. It's why the establishment is so scared of wildcard politicians and the DSA as a movement - both threaten to snip the strings of corporate funding.
As long as those strings are there, what happens in the media is kayfabe. The real decisions are made elsewhere, and the big tentpole events - 9/11 and its aftermath, the various Middle Eastern wars, financial crashes and bailouts - are the special menu the rich get to feed off, and the public never sees in advance, never mind votes on.
Many who were born before segregation ended in the mid-1960s were not granted birth certificates, as their mothers were forced to use midwives during birth because local hospitals were whites only and turned them away.
Small nitpick: while Trump won the popular vote, he did not earn over 50% of the votes. There were enough third-party votes that he won with only 49.8%.
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