Now do that but for everyone
Baby steps are better than none.
Sometimes.
Let’s say you’re in Florida right now. If at this instant you stood up and never stopped taking baby steps, do you think you could escape Milton?
Sometimes baby steps just give the illusion that a situation is being fixed and people calm down and do t take enough action. In this case using virtually any other mode of evacuation besides baby steps.
My man, he didn’t mean literal baby steps.
Obviously…
They meant “any progress is better than none”
And I was pointing out that sometimes unless you meet a certain threshold of progress, the effect of doing nothing and doing “baby steps” is essentially the exact same result.
It’s been 112 years since universal healthcare was first part of a presidential platform, this election it’s not an option from either of the only two viable options.
Do you think Teddy Roosevelt supporters are still alive and waiting patiently?
If they were 18 to vote then, they’d be 130 years old now. Did “baby steps” get them universal healthcare?
Or did the hurricane wipe them out while they shuffled away?
this argument is nonsensical. you’re just arguing for the sake of it. baby steps are obviously and inarguably better than nothing. you’re saying if you can’t fulfill a dream in your lifetime, still doing what you can to lay ground for future generations is the same as not doing anything because as far as you’re concerned it only matters if you yourself see the end result.
fuck that. a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.
Exactly this.
When I was working for U.S. PIRG trying to raise money for global warming, there was a common refrain - “Why should I care? I won’t live long enough to see global warming happen.”
TBF it was true. I can’t imagine a single person who said that to me is still alive today on account of old age. But it’s still a horribly selfish view to take.
you’re saying if you can’t fulfill a dream in your lifetime,
No. I’m not…
And frankly I’m confused how anyone could possibly interpret my comment that way.
your 130 year old voter and hurricane analogies do exactly that. baby steps is the same as no steps only for those people, not for later generations who will have a starting point further than yours.
And I was pointing out that sometimes unless you meet a certain threshold of progress, the effect of doing nothing and doing “baby steps” is essentially the exact same result.
Again missing the point, that “baby steps” can lead to bigger steps. You have to learn to walk before you can run, and you have to learn to crawl before you can walk.
It’s been 112 years since universal healthcare was first part of a presidential platform,
And it was again in 2012, or just a mere 12 years ago.
this election it’s not an option from either of the only two viable options.
If they were 18 to vote then, they’d be 130 years old now. Do you think Teddy Roosevelt supporters are still alive and waiting patiently?
The oldest person ever known only lived to 122, so, no.
But also no, because,
Did “baby steps” get them universal healthcare?
I mean, maybe not universal, but maybe some of them got healthcare in the end? It’s plausible one or two lived to 116 and then benefitted from the ACA.
I’d argue that a big reason why it’s not covered today - the ACA is really good. It works really well and even the GOP has given up on (saying that they will) overturn it. It’s still not universal because the Supreme Court let States ignore the donut hole, so some folks who can’t afford even the ACA premiums still make too much for Medicare/Medicaid (otherwise, we’d have universal healthcare already, albeit on a Netherlands like private system instead of a Canada like single payer system).
In other words, baby steps have almost gotten us fully there.
I’ll still take baby steps over a leap going in the wrong direction any day.
But if the steps are small enough there’s no difference, win or lose it’s not fast enough to avoid the negative situation.
That’s literally my point…
Incremental change works when you never lose sight of the goal and fight at every opportunity to progress towards it, not take one step forward than fall asleep and hope the other guys doesn’t take you ten steps back before you wake up.
And that’s pretty much as simple as I can make it. If Dem baby steps do not even recover from 4 years of a republican then they’re at best stalling the inevitable.
It’s easier to get people to fight if there’s a chance of winning.
If I have to choose between 1) standing still, 2) running head first into fascism, or 3) jumping off a cliff without safety nets to reach a Utopian pripe dream, I’ll choose standing still.
But that’s the thing, we aren’t standing still. We are making progress. Yes it’s slow progress, but it’s fundamental progress. Every Demcratic president has spent their entire presidency undoing the damage of the last Republican president. This means we need to keep voting and not get complacent. Get the democrats into control and then push them further left.
Look man. I want a progress country. I want free healthcare. I want free tuition colleges. I want free lunches in school. I want paid family leave.
I want the same utopia you do. The only difference between us is that while you see the promise land, I see the ground work that needs to happen to reach it.
Just because our heads are down doesn’t mean we’ve lost sight of the goal. Our heads are down because we’re fighting tooth and nail against a torrent that wants to drag us backwards. We are clawing our way out of this nightmare.
If Dem baby steps do not even recover from 4 years of a republican
From a healthcare perspective though what damage was done? Those four years resulted in failure to repeal the ACA. If anything it’s the other way around - Obama’s masterpiece escaped relatively unscathed and is ready to be built on further. So exactly the good scenario you are driving at - with victory within slow reach.
But if the steps are small enough there’s no difference, win or lose it’s not fast enough to avoid the negative situation.
What’s the negative situation here? Makes more sense with global warming - at some point, even if we get everyone to agree and work together, it may come too late and we’re no longer able to stop it.
But for universal healthcare? What’s to stop us from pushing out the deadline, like a project that needs more rework, but comes back late and perfect?
It’s been 112 years since universal healthcare was first part of a presidential platform
Ah, yes, back in the days before penicillin or insulin were discovered. Do tell us more about what forms of 1912-era healthcare are not largely accessible to the 2024 masses.
Do you think Teddy Roosevelt supporters are still alive and waiting patiently?
I think his plan to offer health insurance to the working-class poor (and their dependents) sounds a lot more like Medicaid than universal healthcare. You know, baby steps.
What are you? Terrible analogy man?
Escaping Milton using only baby steps?
Depends on when you started, of course. Like say, if you started last year, you’d probably be safe by now.
Of course the point is that once you start taking baby steps, it gets easier to transition to adult steps (and to extend the metaphor further) and then eventually flying out on a jet plane. So if you start doing baby steps late it may still be enough to get out if you “grow up” fast enough.
(BTW, don’t believe me regarding only baby steps? Well, here are my calculations:
Comparing the map from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2024/10/09/hurricane-milton-tracker-path-spaghetti-models/75580886007/ on Milton’s likely path and affected area, to a map of cities in the State of Georgia, it seems getting to Douglas, GA would be enough to escape successfully.
Using Google Maps, https://maps.app.goo.gl/pdMtowAUpQ1W1nq96 , an adult walking non-stop 24/7 would be expected to make it in 7 days. First let’s double that, assuming it’s 12 hours of walking, 8 for sleep, and 4 for stuff like eating, showering, and everything else. So 14 days.
Now reference this study, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1193922/ - so a 2 year old walks at 2/8 KM/HR or I guess 0.25 KM/HR or 1 KM in 4 hours. This is compared to the adult speed of 5 KM/HR walking. So that’s a slowdown of 20x, or that 14 days becomes 280 days.)
The Republican solution is for the olds to die in order to save the economy. Except if it’s them, of course.
Don’t forget that they need to work until dying!
People who receive long-term support services are among the government’s most expensive beneficiaries. Although they comprise 6% of all people enrolled in Medicaid, they account for 34% of federal and state Medicaid spending, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Because it’s a huge grift where lots of companies never visit the patient and charge Medicaid a shit ton of money…
The solution isn’t paying those companies even more money to do nothing.
The solution is fixing our entire healthcare system.
But for some reason Harris will only do things the majority of voters want when it’s against the party platform. 50+% of Americans wanting universal healthcare isn’t enough of a reason for her to support universal healthcare…
You really want universal Healthcare?
Suspend Medicare for 5 years, the boomers hate socialized medicine already, let’s respect their wishes.
Suddenly, you’ll have a functioning national polity capable of rational discourse again.
Bruh…
The first time it was part of a presidential platform was Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.
If all it took was people dying off, we’d have gotten it by now. The problem is we keep trying, getting a tiny crumb, and then get stalled another 20 years by our own party because we just got something.
Affordable care act was 2010, so we might get another crumb when Harris is getting ready to leave her second term. That way the progressive in the primary would get under cut on healthcare against the moderate because they’ll frame asking for more as being against what we just got.
I just legitimately don’t understand why more people don’t see it, it’s blatantly obvious on a long enough timeline.
The only way we get universal healthcare is if we refuse to shut up about it.
I already get it. I’m a disabled vet, but it’s just insane to me hearing what the majority of Americans have to deal with
I legitimately don’t understand why more people don’t see it.
Propaganda and brainwashing. It’s powerful, especially when you have other things to think about and can’t take the time to consider and diffuse it. The vested interests in the current system are savvy and willing to spend to protect their profits.
Affordable care act was 2010,
a tiny crumb, and then get stalledI wouldn’t call ACA a tiny crumb, but most of the cookie. My mom didn’t live to see it, but had she lived long enough, ACA would have literally saved her life. It’s exactly what she needed for the preceeding twenty years and didn’t get.
If all it took was people dying off, we’d have gotten it by now.
Agreed. What happened at Charlottesville in 2017 and on Jan 6, 2021 shows that our opponents include many younger folks. This isn’t going to just die out over time.
I already get it. I’m a disabled vet
Thank you for your service. But I wouldn’t call that universal in the same way that the ACA is not universal (unless the donut hole gets filled).
I suspect Harris looked at this poll or something like it. Americans don’t know what they want, but they do know what they don’t want, and that’s too much change at one time. Which is a shame because Obama ran on Hope and Change. But by the time he took office, the gap between people who said that they thought the Government should take responsibility for quality healthcare and those who say that it’s none of the Government’s business shrank from like +40 to almost 0, and only in a matter of 2 years. Then he passed the ACA, and that number went negative. Between Progressives leaving him high and dry and moderates saying he went to far, Obama just got creamed on this. And I’m sure Harris wants to serve more than one term, especially if the Trumpster Fire is still kicking around in 2028!
By the same token she needs Pennsylvania and 58% of registered voters want to ban fracking because it negatively effects them…
Like you said, the people know what they don’t work, but both candidate have explicitly said they won’t ban fracking.
If Harris is doing what you’re saying and just trying to win, why not ban fracking?
Couple of ideas here:
- Registered Voters != Likely Voters. That’s like Polling 101 right there and part of why this isn’t black and white.
- She probably thinks she’ll lose more of her coalition by banning fracking than she’ll retain.
- Cold, hard, cash is always a possible answer.
Affordable care act was 2010, so we might get another crumb when Harris is getting ready to leave her second term. That way the progressive in the primary would get under cut on healthcare against the moderate because they’ll frame asking for more as being against what we just got.
Jesus, the ACA took literally every penny of political capital Obama had, and he walked in with more than any Dem president in decades.
If he hadn’t wasted his and our time on the ACA we could have passed something useful, like campaign finance reform, though that would have been dismantled too, you still have to work on it, CU is killing this country.
You have a 5th grader’s appreciation of politics.
Healthcare needs to be fixed in a completely different way, the insurers need to be staked through the heart, and the providers not far after, otherwise nothing you do will matter, there’s simply too much money involved.
In fact it wasn’t quite enough in the end as he actually was focused on two major arcs:
The ACA and the DREAM act. The ACA made it but the DREAM act failed (and we ended up with DACA instead).
I don’t want to give up on the dreamers, but OTOH, instead of focusing on them perhaps he could have had more successful results spending that effort and capital on your plan? Though of course hindsight is 20/20.
No, the only chance to get campaign financing reform was to make that the only press, 100%, and go all in on one roll.
The thing is: afterwards he would have had capital left, but after the ACA he just made more political hostility, that’s what happens when your opposition party can spend a whole term fundraising and getting lobbied because you’re touching a political third rail.
If he’d managed serious campaign finance and lobbying reform, he could have used that win to neutralize his opposition and land either the ACA or the dreamers.
Actually maybe he could do campaign finance and the dreamers, the problem is for the ACA he would have been constantly threatened and bargained with the dreamers, and those bargains would have to be cashed in anyway to close the deal, ACA was such a political battleground it forced everyone to mobilize for war footing.
The GOP were desperate for a rallying cry against Obama and he gave it to them on a platter.
Ah, yes that makes sense. Either ACA or DREAM would have burned thru too much on it’s own, so that would have had to be the first one and then ACA/DREAM as the second act.
100% in agreement that we need universal healthcare. I’m one of those people that feel like medicare for all is already the compromise.
But I just want to mention that that’s not all of what those in home care programs are. There’s also a program (different names in different states, but normally called Choices) that allows for people to choose a care giver themselves, and essentially act as their employer for their care. That’s how my mom is able to stay in her home, by employing me to care for her. It’s not a perfect system, and it’s rife with fucked up situations, but it’s something that does need way more funding, and would also benefit from a universal healthcare system
100% in agreement that we need universal healthcare. I’m one of those people that feel like medicare for all is already the compromise.
Medicare sucks tho, doesn’t cover a lot, and requires huge copays.
None of which is necessary, and just adds overhead to the cost requiring higher costs for less care.
I feel like there’s just no reason not to have a national healthcare service that’s worth the tradeoff. People aren’t just going to line up for unnecessary procedures to exploit it, and once we get past the I ritual rush from everyone not being able to afford treatment, people would just act like in every other developed nation and get lifetime checkups so issues are caught and addressed early which both raise chance of survival and lowers cost of treatment.
Why aren’t you for that if every other option results in worse average care for more average costs?
Medicare … doesn’t cover a lot, and requires huge copays.
Worth asking why. The answer is that it’s not being funded well enough.
None of which is necessary,
Agreed.
and just adds overhead to the cost requiring higher costs for less care.
But this wouldn’t be the case if it were properly funded.
I feel like there’s just no reason not to have a national healthcare service that’s worth the tradeoff.
But that’s just it - if Medicare for all were properly funded, then wouldn’t it be worth the tradeoff?
Whats the alternative NHS going to look like, if it ends up with the same funding problem as Medicare? (Spoiler alert - it’ll look just like Medicare.)
Is that “you” in the final sentence asking why I, dharmacurious, am against it, or a more general “why is anyone” against it?
I am absolutely for it. Like I said, I feel like medicare for all is already the compromise. I want a full NHS, with a complete and total ban on private insurance and healthcare. Including dental and everything else.
So…if you have criticisms of how Medicare is run, then how, pray tell, do you expect the government to run a universal healthcare program? Maybe we should be pressuring people to fix Medicare. Because if we can’t fix Medicare, we can’t run a Universal Healthcare program. Besides. Imagine the backlash of being told you have to give up your platinum tier health insurance plan from those who like their platinum tier health insurance plans? Oh wait. You don’t have to.. That already happened and creamed Obama in 2010 and 2014.
As an aside, my favourite idea for fixing Medicare is to replace all government employee health insurance programs with Medicare coverage, and a mandate that the only healthcare you can receive is healthcare from Medicare, and if it’s available to you as a Government employee, it must be available to anyone else who uses Medicare. I figure that’ll change some tunes REAL fucking quick! Same with mandating Government employees, especially legislators and judges, use Social Security for their retirement plans. In my field, we call this ‘eating your own dogfood.’
Why are you typing long replies to multiple of my comments within 15 minutes of each other on a 2 day old thread?
Do you really want to get in multiple simultaneous conversations with me?
Edit:
Jesus, you’re still going, people don’t have the energy for this, they’re just going to block you
Oh, so you don’t want to actually have the discussion you were prompting. OK! Good to know.
Dear reader, to answer this person’s question, I point this out to point out why you shouldn’t not vote for Harris just because she didn’t give you exactly what you want. One of two people will be President next year. One’s named Kamala Harris. The other is named Donald Trump. NOTHING will change this fact.
We can talk about how we can push Harris to be a better Democrat. In fact, we should. That’s how you get things done in a large nation like tthe USA, filled with people whose livelihoods will be impacted by your proposed changes! That’s what I was pointing out. This user didn’t want to have that conversation, but feel free and post here if you want to, and maybe, think about how wise it is to keep Harris out of the White House when the only other option is a tin-pot Twitler with delusions of grandeur.
Reply to edit: Then block me. I’m not going to stop replying to your nonsense, so you might as well just block me. ;)
Because it’s a huge grift where lots of companies never visit the patient and charge Medicaid a shit ton of money…
Worth pointing out that this already illegal. That’s actually Medicare Fraud, and how it’s illegal (and how these things get enforced) is explained in https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/Downloads/Fraud-Abuse-MLN4649244.pdf
I’ve done work for a healthcare adjacent company and this was required training. So that part isn’t really broken (in the sense that the system allows and permits it or even protects this), it may just be that we need to spend more money on enforcement of the existing laws.
The solution isn’t paying those companies even more money to do nothing.
Agreed.
The solution is fixing our entire healthcare system.
As above, enforcing the existing laws after better detection of violations should be enough.
when it’s against the party platform.
But for some reason Harris will only do things the majority of voters wantUh… yeah. Glad she’s listening to the majority of voters instead of a platform that doesn’t speak to them.
Medicare For All!
The article didn’t mention it but did her proposal include anything about pay requirements for home health care aides? Generally it is a poorly paid profession and one thing I like about Biden is he always makes sure to tie things to good paying, potentiallu union jobs. Hopefully it’s just further in the policy statement, if not this is a misstep from Harris and a retraction from Biden’s labor friendly policies at a time when Trump/Vance are appealing to poor folks and labor people left and right (literally)
In addition to higher pay and Medicare coverage, I’d also like to see some tighter regulations on training. What’s required varies by state, but usually it’s not too stringent, often something like a 2 week course and a background check.
I work in 911 dispatch, people who have home health aides obviously have a lot of medical emergencies, and it’s often those aides calling me when they do. Often they’re completely clueless about the patients medical history, unable to answer basic questions like their age, often don’t even know the address, and often are uncooperative with me and sometimes refuse to do things like perform CPR when I need them to.
Some are great, most aren’t.
We are going to have a lot more elderly soon, and not a lot of young people to fulfill these roles. I am not sure making the requirements more stringent is the best answer… I would rather everyone have an aid, rather than half the people having heavily qualified aids.
Maybe they could create some program that just applies to the industry, where there is some form with all that vital information that the state administrates thar the care giver is required to maintain on hand. Free/mandatory CPR classes should be a must also.
