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Obama's legacy

Kory

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More on Obama's legacy and really only significant achievement of his presidency. Has the ACA made the opioid crisis explode? It really took his administration all too long to respond to the epidemic that was killing tens of thousands of Americans yearly. After all, the CDC issued a statement in 2011 that showed a building problem of prescription drugs. Why was his administration so nonchalant about the issue?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/t...oblem-with-heroin-and-opioids/article/2601312

http://www.dailywire.com/news/18009/opioid-crisis-got-worse-thanks-obamacare-aaron-bandler
 

Evan

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More on Obama's legacy and really only significant achievement of his presidency. Has the ACA made the opioid crisis explode? It really took his administration all too long to respond to the epidemic that was killing tens of thousands of Americans yearly. After all, the CDC issued a statement in 2011 that showed a building problem of prescription drugs. Why was his administration so nonchalant about the issue?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/t...oblem-with-heroin-and-opioids/article/2601312

http://www.dailywire.com/news/18009/opioid-crisis-got-worse-thanks-obamacare-aaron-bandler

I've seen some really dumb things before, but those two articles will probably remain at the top of my list forever. Not aimed at you, Kory. I'm assuming you didn't really read them? Because you'd have seen the egregious flaws, too.

People with insurance are more likely to use health services? Really? What a shocker! This guy wrote a whole article to explain something most people understood as an adolescent? Sheesh.

Of special note is laying out a case that the ACA is to blame by explicitly lying about data in your charts. Federal Medicaid Expansion didn't even start until 2014? No problem, just use charts showing overdose changes from 2010-2015. Close enough. I mean they passed ACA in 2010, so it counts, right? This guy would be laughed out of peer review and have tomatoes thrown at his head.

The particular demographic (White, under 55) examined is also one that was highly susceptible to "losing insurance" due to job loss, spousal job loss, or aging out of parents' coverage. Furthermore, some of the most frequent OD victims are actually chronic pain patients -- people who frequently couldn't qualify or afford insurance prior to the ACA due to having a preexisting condition. The random Twitter account used as a source obviously didn't have any data that showed whether or not new Medicaid patients were the source for an increase in OD rate or if it was due to patients being able to obtain private insurance again.

Remember, ACA Medicaid expansion didn't start until 2014 at the EARLIEST. Preexisting insurance high risk pool, dependent coverage until age 26, and other changes became effective in 2011 or even earlier.

To muddy the waters further, the overall ban on excluding those with preexisting conditions kiosks) kicked off in 2014 just like ACA Medicaid expansion. I don't see anywhere where that was separated or broken out. Last time I checked, in excess of 85% of Americans support that part of the ACA. No one wants to there to be a preexisting conditions exclusion clause (I do, but not for the reason people would think).

So, the data the guy is using doesn't really even cover the Medicaid expansion population (at best he covers a year of data, but uses 5 years of overall data), and the brief part of it that it covers is muddied by the removal of preexisting conditions clauses at the exact same time. At best the author is completely and totally intellectually dishonest. At worst, they are too ignorant to even know that they screwed up.

Finally, we should look at the reason that many of these states said they wanted to expand Medicaid...wait for it...THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC. That's right! By the 2013/2014 decision point for states, the epidemic was already at a crescendo. Guess what was happening to paramedics, hospitals, and medical providers that were treating OD victims? Losing copious amounts of money and on the brink of shutting down. Opiate addicts rarely have insurance or cash/assets. Thus, service was being provided for free and heavily taxing health systems. And guess what people that don't have insurance or money can't do either? Attend rehab or outpatient treatment! They also can't afford replacement therapies like Methadone or Suboxone.

It is hardly a surprise that the states with the worst opiate problems chose to expand coverage in 2014. They needed to keep their hospitals open, their paramedic services on call, and needed treatment options for people that have zero or insurance coverage. Nine out of the Top 11 States for drug ODs expanded Medicaid.

It is currently only 2017. States that expanded Medicaid would just now be getting good datasets together. This is a very complicated issue, so I urge people to examine any article or link that they read or stumble upon. Does the data they are showing actually make sense? Are they trying to fit a point to the data rather than the other way around?

Bottom line, articles saying the ACA caused or exacerbated the Opioid Epidemic are total BS.

I'm a major critic of the ACA (for numerous reasons), but misleading articles like the ones posted are the reason we can't have any sensible debate about what needs to be done.

I've laid out my very Conservative thoughts on fixing healthcare before. The best plans I've seen also provide for all children and the truly indigent, but would create wealth in this country instead of healthcare being a blackhole for tax dollars. But, because these plans actually obliterate large insurance companies and give people control of their own care, they would never pass.

The ACA was never a liberal/Conservative issue or Democrat/Republican. It was always about who wants a bigger government and crony capitalism versus those that wanted to experiment and find real solutions. Unfortunately the latter was such a small number of politicians that their voice/vote never mattered.

I'm sure sending Roy Moore to Washington will fix the issue. Or, for that matter, Doug Jones.
 

Evan

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Obama even made a workout video.



Wow that's so much worse than offering a deceased soldier's father 25k and then forgetting about it until the media gets involved. And, no, it wasn't a misunderstanding, and yes the father is actually angry. Called Trump a liar.

Trump also lied about having called all the families of KIA servicemembers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...4cbc8c-b43a-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html

I know, I know. The rot isn't due to our Commander in Chief. It is due to politically correct things like expecting a man to keep his word.
 

Kory

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I've seen some really dumb things before, but those two articles will probably remain at the top of my list forever. Not aimed at you, Kory. I'm assuming you didn't really read them? Because you'd have seen the egregious flaws, too.

People with insurance are more likely to use health services? Really? What a shocker! This guy wrote a whole article to explain something most people understood as an adolescent? Sheesh.

Of special note is laying out a case that the ACA is to blame by explicitly lying about data in your charts. Federal Medicaid Expansion didn't even start until 2014? No problem, just use charts showing overdose changes from 2010-2015. Close enough. I mean they passed ACA in 2010, so it counts, right? This guy would be laughed out of peer review and have tomatoes thrown at his head.

The particular demographic (White, under 55) examined is also one that was highly susceptible to "losing insurance" due to job loss, spousal job loss, or aging out of parents' coverage. Furthermore, some of the most frequent OD victims are actually chronic pain patients -- people who frequently couldn't qualify or afford insurance prior to the ACA due to having a preexisting condition. The random Twitter account used as a source obviously didn't have any data that showed whether or not new Medicaid patients were the source for an increase in OD rate or if it was due to patients being able to obtain private insurance again.

Remember, ACA Medicaid expansion didn't start until 2014 at the EARLIEST. Preexisting insurance high risk pool, dependent coverage until age 26, and other changes became effective in 2011 or even earlier.

To muddy the waters further, the overall ban on excluding those with preexisting conditions kiosks) kicked off in 2014 just like ACA Medicaid expansion. I don't see anywhere where that was separated or broken out. Last time I checked, in excess of 85% of Americans support that part of the ACA. No one wants to there to be a preexisting conditions exclusion clause (I do, but not for the reason people would think).

So, the data the guy is using doesn't really even cover the Medicaid expansion population (at best he covers a year of data, but uses 5 years of overall data), and the brief part of it that it covers is muddied by the removal of preexisting conditions clauses at the exact same time. At best the author is completely and totally intellectually dishonest. At worst, they are too ignorant to even know that they screwed up.

Finally, we should look at the reason that many of these states said they wanted to expand Medicaid...wait for it...THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC. That's right! By the 2013/2014 decision point for states, the epidemic was already at a crescendo. Guess what was happening to paramedics, hospitals, and medical providers that were treating OD victims? Losing copious amounts of money and on the brink of shutting down. Opiate addicts rarely have insurance or cash/assets. Thus, service was being provided for free and heavily taxing health systems. And guess what people that don't have insurance or money can't do either? Attend rehab or outpatient treatment! They also can't afford replacement therapies like Methadone or Suboxone.

It is hardly a surprise that the states with the worst opiate problems chose to expand coverage in 2014. They needed to keep their hospitals open, their paramedic services on call, and needed treatment options for people that have zero or insurance coverage. Nine out of the Top 11 States for drug ODs expanded Medicaid.

It is currently only 2017. States that expanded Medicaid would just now be getting good datasets together. This is a very complicated issue, so I urge people to examine any article or link that they read or stumble upon. Does the data they are showing actually make sense? Are they trying to fit a point to the data rather than the other way around?

Bottom line, articles saying the ACA caused or exacerbated the Opioid Epidemic are total BS.

I'm a major critic of the ACA (for numerous reasons), but misleading articles like the ones posted are the reason we can't have any sensible debate about what needs to be done.

I've laid out my very Conservative thoughts on fixing healthcare before. The best plans I've seen also provide for all children and the truly indigent, but would create wealth in this country instead of healthcare being a blackhole for tax dollars. But, because these plans actually obliterate large insurance companies and give people control of their own care, they would never pass.

The ACA was never a liberal/Conservative issue or Democrat/Republican. It was always about who wants a bigger government and crony capitalism versus those that wanted to experiment and find real solutions. Unfortunately the latter was such a small number of politicians that their voice/vote never mattered.

I'm sure sending Roy Moore to Washington will fix the issue. Or, for that matter, Doug Jones.
That's why I put a question mark with regards to the ACA/opioid influence. :) I wanted people to read and see for themselves to make that determination.
 

Kory

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His comments toward the family of a fallen soldier was quite unbecoming as well. Whether they were intended to be insulting or not (I can't really say since it has turned into a he said/she said), it still is tasteless. This is a family that is grieving for a man who paid the ultimate price in full service to his country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/us/politics/trump-widow-johnson-call.html
 

Evan

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That's why I put a question mark with regards to the ACA/opioid influence. :) I wanted people to read and see for themselves to make that determination.

My issue is that of all the problems with the ACA, this isn't really one of them. Of course Obama could've done more on the opioid problem, but it wasn't a problem that came out of nowhere. Years of legislation that allowed Pharmaceutical companies to pay doctors for over-prescribing and a painfully slow implementation of state level prescription monitoring are two governmental failures that the Federal Executive branch wasn't responsible for.

But it all started with a study that said legitimate pain patients have a near zero rate of opioid addiction when given high (over 100 MED) doses of opioids, and a medical concensus was that it was a human right to be pain free.

It was a known problem long before the ACA dating back even before Florida's crazy pill mill epidemic a decade prior. The medical concensus took awhile to change, and that's why it became so problematic and damaging. Our country has never supported the government broadly telling Physicians what they are allowed to treat and how, and has largely allowed the medical community to self-regulation. The government has always intervened when problems became epidemical or the self-regulation broke down.

In a way, it is kind of like mass shootings. It is a price we pay for a certain level of freedom. If we want the government to control all these things then people just need to know there is plenty of bad that will come along with any potential good.

For the most part, a tiny number of physicians were responsible for the most egregious abuses, but until the medical concensus changed (and it has), govenrmental efforts could really only have an impact on those engaging in criminal behavior. Unless we want the government to decide what treatment we are allowed to have.
 

Evan

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His comments toward the family of a fallen soldier was quite unbecoming as well. Whether they were intended to be insulting or not (I can't really say since it has turned into a he said/she said), it still is tasteless. This is a family that is grieving for a man who paid the ultimate price in full service to his country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/us/politics/trump-widow-johnson-call.html

The whole thing was/is just so unnecessary. Why not just say we are handling contact with the fallen from Niger in private as we always do? And leave it at that? If the media wants dates and times just tell them we have a process and are following it. But he can't help himself.
 

Mike S

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I honestly don't think Trump meant anything bad but he lacks the ability to express empathy so it is anyone's guess what he might say.

Look, we get it. Us Americans will understand, Mr. President, you're not good at this kind of stuff. We'll understand if in the future you will remove yourself from these sensitive situations and send the Vice President instead.
 

Matt

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The whole thing was/is just so unnecessary. Why not just say we are handling contact with the fallen from Niger in private as we always do? And leave it at that? If the media wants dates and times just tell them we have a process and are following it. But he can't help himself.

I agree but the dems will stop at nothing to harm this president. Gen. Kelley was in the room and said the call was appropriate. Wilson, in my opinion is a nut.

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Matt

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Evan

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I saw it live. But Kelly is ignoring that Trump set this all off in the first place. The number 1 priority should be the families and not Trump's ego. Furthermore, I respect the hell out of Kelly, but he can't really say with a straightface that he didn't know anyone was listening in. He was listening in, and the widow put the call on speaker. The family has confirmed the Congresswoman's account of the call.

I don't like seeing either side politicize this stuff. Kelly should know better as should the Congresswoman. Kelly should have gotten Trump to shut up after the first press conference. The 25k check and all that crap came out because of Trump's need to claim he is superior to previous Presidents.

Kelly isn't naive that his service, and the loss of his son, leave him uniquely positioned to buffer any criticism that Trump may take for this situation. At the same time, is he not aware that the family feels strongly about what occurred during the call as well? And that the Congresswoman is a close family friend and mentor to the deceased servicemember?

The issue is that NONE of this would be happening had Trump just said what I mentioned earlier. "We reach out to all families at an appropriate time and place. These are private moments and we ask that the media respect that." This isn't a battle you should try to wage even if the media is trying to lead you into it. Because it is about the families NOT you.

The Johnson family wasn't the only family upset by Trump's remarks. He just needs to keep his mouth shut about stuff like this. Kelly should know that. He *has* to know that. He's been there. I doubt he'd have been happy if Obama had done something similar. It is easy to get tunnel vision in the White House. I hope that isn't happening to Kelly.
 

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Donald Trump has been caught in lie after lie, but the guy who works for him said this call was totally appropriate, so we should believe him? Sure, okay. He basically mocked John McCain for getting captured, so saying "He knew what he signed up for" isn't below him. The man is human garbage, he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
 

Evan

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Evan

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Of all the issues and things that you might cause you to lose your credibility, this situation with Kelly is flat-out depressing.

I'm not going to say he lied yet, but every moment that passes without an explanation of why video of the Miami building dedication event completely contradicts his claims from yesterday, and he is a moment John Kelly's credibility is twisting in the wind. This is why it is such a bad idea to have so many former military in the cabinet. The WH is fighting this battle by continually pointing out that Kelly is a retired 4 star. That is an unwelcome politicization of the military, and a blow to its prestige and credibility considering a number of Kelly's comments yesterday are false.
 
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