I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I would hate for Santorum to become president (and I can't believe that's actually an option at this point), but jesus christ, people
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Actually I have since my local news radio station puts him on after the morning news and sometimes when I'm getting in to work late, it switches over to his show. The few times I have listened to him, I've found him unpleasantly shrill, always talking about issues in the most bombastic tones possible, but that could just be the lead-in segment to get people hooked which turns me off.
Still, I did hear the entire clip about Fluke on the evening news. The first time he called her a prostitute, I was willing to write it off as a joke in bad taste. But he kept calling her a prostitute and that is not okay. You can point out the flaws in her argument (of which there are many), you can point out that as a law student she has no expert knowledge other than her own anecdotes, you can point out that she's hard left, you can point out that she wasn't properly scheduled and the Democrats only tried to put her on the docket at the last minute was as a publicity stunt.
The one thing you cannot do and retain my respect is to try to degrade a woman using slurs that have for over a century been used to shame women. His argument, during that part of the show, was not, "wow, she showed during her testimony that she has absolutely no idea how the healthcare system really works and her argument is ridiculous because X." It was "you shouldn't listen to her because she's a slut." That is not acceptable.
Coupled with the fact that Rush has a history of using incredibly misogynist language about other women before (and has gotten bad media exposure over it), I feel pretty confident in calling him an asshole towards women.
I agree that eyeglasses and dental cleanings shouldn't be free. My focus in college was economics and health care (the field I've gone into), so I could talk about this topic all day. ^^
We'd be much better off with a system of individually-held high deductible insurance and HSAs, a subsidized state pool for people who can't get private insurance, and a simpler, transparent pricing system that would be easily accessible over the web, so people could compare doctors' pricing. The tax code needs to be changed to encourage people to buy their own insurance and employers to contribute to HSA accounts instead of the other way around.
People with no insurance could be charged only a multiple of the lowest private insurance the doctor accepted, such as 1.2x. (Private insurance so that doctors wouldn't drop Medicaid and Medicare with their low reimbursements.) This would (1) prevent price gouging those patients, (2) allow for smaller insurance companies to enter the market and be competitive, and (3) still provide extra cost savings to large companies to encourage the behavior of keeping rates reasonable.
The most important thing, however, that needs to be done is creating a standardized data format and transmission protocol so that doctors' medical records systems can talk to each other. This would save hundreds of thousands of man hours, and be the largest possible productivity gain for doctors' offices. As it stands, by having fragmented systems of basically data silos, it encourages doctors to join together into conglomerate chains to realize those productivity gains, with resulting less choice for the consumer.
Still, I did hear the entire clip about Fluke on the evening news. The first time he called her a prostitute, I was willing to write it off as a joke in bad taste. But he kept calling her a prostitute and that is not okay. You can point out the flaws in her argument (of which there are many), you can point out that as a law student she has no expert knowledge other than her own anecdotes, you can point out that she's hard left, you can point out that she wasn't properly scheduled and the Democrats only tried to put her on the docket at the last minute was as a publicity stunt.
The one thing you cannot do and retain my respect is to try to degrade a woman using slurs that have for over a century been used to shame women. His argument, during that part of the show, was not, "wow, she showed during her testimony that she has absolutely no idea how the healthcare system really works and her argument is ridiculous because X." It was "you shouldn't listen to her because she's a slut." That is not acceptable.
Coupled with the fact that Rush has a history of using incredibly misogynist language about other women before (and has gotten bad media exposure over it), I feel pretty confident in calling him an asshole towards women.
I agree that eyeglasses and dental cleanings shouldn't be free. My focus in college was economics and health care (the field I've gone into), so I could talk about this topic all day. ^^
We'd be much better off with a system of individually-held high deductible insurance and HSAs, a subsidized state pool for people who can't get private insurance, and a simpler, transparent pricing system that would be easily accessible over the web, so people could compare doctors' pricing. The tax code needs to be changed to encourage people to buy their own insurance and employers to contribute to HSA accounts instead of the other way around.
People with no insurance could be charged only a multiple of the lowest private insurance the doctor accepted, such as 1.2x. (Private insurance so that doctors wouldn't drop Medicaid and Medicare with their low reimbursements.) This would (1) prevent price gouging those patients, (2) allow for smaller insurance companies to enter the market and be competitive, and (3) still provide extra cost savings to large companies to encourage the behavior of keeping rates reasonable.
The most important thing, however, that needs to be done is creating a standardized data format and transmission protocol so that doctors' medical records systems can talk to each other. This would save hundreds of thousands of man hours, and be the largest possible productivity gain for doctors' offices. As it stands, by having fragmented systems of basically data silos, it encourages doctors to join together into conglomerate chains to realize those productivity gains, with resulting less choice for the consumer.
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