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Comments Posted By choicelady

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Our 200,000th Comment! We’re Celebrating With a Comment Contest!

Everyone write MORE. At 4 years to 200,000, it will be 16 years until 1 million and the party. Who can wait that long?

AdLib – can we have a SMALLER party at 500,000?

» Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 9:09 pm

Thank you dear friend – great commentary and wonderful song!

Tell hubby to GIVE BACK THE MUG!!! Or at least share, right? LOL!!

» Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 9:07 pm

Hi Kalima – I will indeed enjoy and treasure the mug. What fun to win a contest you did not even know you were in! Best possible way.

Thank you for all you have contributed to this amazing site. PPOV is a very important part of my and many people’s lives. You all make it a grand place to be!

» Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 9:06 pm

Hi TakeInAPlay – haven’t seen you for some time and am delighted you’re here.

I love your “Mystery Science Theater 3000” comment – that made me laugh for how accurate it is!

Thanks for the congrats – no one is more startled than I that I happened to post at exactly the right moment. Only thing I ever won was in a high school raffle – a man’s sports shirt I gave to my Dad. I will get to use the mug all by myself!

Wheee!

Come back more – it’s wonderful to see you!

» Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 9:04 pm

OMG! Who knew? I feel honored to have done that, however unwittingly. Kudos to kesmarn who prompted the reply – without your thoughtful comment, dear kes, I would not have come over at the opportune moment. Thank you!

Being with PPOV has been an outstanding experience for me, and I think for all of us. It is a place where reflection and good conversation occur along with humor and civility. It is our shelter in the storm free from the viciousness within both our civic culture AND public commentary that affects so many other sites.

Without PPOV there would be less reason to remain engaged in honorable discussion. It has offered us all a highly therapeutic means to vent, to learn, to grow, and often to laugh. We also have built great friendships, expanded horizons together, shared our sorrows including the loss of beloved PPOV friends, and created enduring actions we hope will change the world.

Thank you for the honor of the 200,00th comment. Thank you all far more for simply being here on the Planet. I am honored to be part of it all.

» Posted By choicelady On October 7, 2013 @ 10:15 am

Tea Party Republicans To Offer PR Services To Serial Killers

This is funny – until you think about it! AdLib – I would only caution that YOU MAY BE HELPING THEM! The Baggers and their Libtard friends could easily take this seriously!

Life in America is getting freaking weirder by the moment and way too dangerous for my tastes.

Thank then, in the middle of the crisis, for making us laugh!

» Posted By choicelady On October 9, 2013 @ 10:01 pm

WATCH: The First GOP/Tea Party Film Festival

LOL!!! Thanks, AdLib. We needed that to remind us all that the GOP specialize in snatching defeat from the jaws of, well, defeat.

And they’re so proud of themselves. Do NOT get it.

I hope they realize this film fest you’ve compiled is really all about them. But at least WE know! Thanks for a set of good laughs!

» Posted By choicelady On October 1, 2013 @ 12:33 pm

The End is Near…for John Boehner and the GOP

A Renaissance woman you are!

» Posted By choicelady On September 30, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

PERFECT!!! Harry Reid just handed the House a clean CR. Now the ball – spiked to him by Harry – is in Boehner’s court. He has to pretend that there is some reason why he cannot pass this. Every other effort has been to maneuver something out of what is already the law of the land. Now he has the instrument to do what the House must, and internal polling of even the GOP is to join with Dems and pass it.

Will Boenher cave to the extremists and shut down the government or will he pass a clean CR?

We shall see which side he is on. I just hope he remembers that “NO NO NO” is NOT a policy position.

PERFECT song, Sue!

» Posted By choicelady On September 30, 2013 @ 1:58 pm

Ted Cruz – The Miley Cyrus of Politics

I can forgive Miley – she’s PAID to perform silly stuff. Cruz is not. He is paid to legislate and develop good policies for us not make an ass of himself. Ego is one thing in the world of entertainment. It is unforgiveable in the world of statesmanship.

I don’t have to care about Miley. I cannot avoid caring about Cruz.

» Posted By choicelady On September 28, 2013 @ 4:46 pm

Curing Obamacare Fever – Part Three: What The Public Really Thinks About the ACA

Murph I just read that Roy Blunt is encouraging everyone to sign up for ACA!!! That was on Think Progress – is it accurate? That, coming from a Republican, is HUGE! That should help the wobbly undecided folks who really need health insurance but are afraid of ACA. Good on him, as Molly Ivins would have said.

» Posted By choicelady On September 28, 2013 @ 8:31 am

Thank you for another rational and helpful insight into ACA.

While I think racism lies at the heart of much of this opposition, ACA never would fly today even as a GOP plan. Grover Norquistian hatred of federal government (or even state) has permeated a fiction about ‘rugged individualism’ and ‘self direction’ that never was true and is less true every passing moment. The long steady beat of “government is the enemy” has taken hold in some quarters, particularly those repudiating the national government in 1860.

We live in a world of fantasy about how self sufficient we can be. Any trailer-dwelling family off in the woods may make it, but it depends so much on how you define that ideal of “making it”. In “The Glass Castle”, a true story, children grow up with parents so deluded by their own specialness and difference that they allow the kids to starve, dwell in abject poverty, and be neglected so the parents can serve their selfishness and their ‘art’. That’s a lefty version of the story, but it exists everywhere. So “making it” comes to mean – nobody died. Yet.

But ask cold, hungry, sick kids if that’s enough. Rickets that could be prevented, disease that could be cured? Dismissing that in your family is sheer evil, not triumphalism over government. Ayn Rand might be proud of you in principle – but at the end SHE took Medicare, too.

What drives us is illusion. What saves us is reality. ACA is the latter.

» Posted By choicelady On September 26, 2013 @ 3:06 pm

Curing Obamacare Fever – Part Two: The Top 5 Myths About The ACA

Have to answer your reply here. There will be pressure on poorly run hospitals to shape up. The omission from the Exchange insurance plans will hurt them a lot. They are inefficient, and the “Cleveland Clinic” model is not only GREAT patient care, it is ideal for almost any hospital overseeing the long term outcomes of their patients. It’s far more friendly to their payments than the chaos of $5 aspirins and $10 bedpan accounting.

Lying outside the Exchanges may seem to give the providers more freedom, but over time it will prove to be untrue. They will be the dinosaurs, and don’t think for a second that the insurance companies cannot tell how that affects THEIR bottom line. Change is coming to the world of medicine, for the better, thanks to ACA.

» Posted By choicelady On September 27, 2013 @ 8:50 am

The fine is NOT used by the person BEING fined – they are entirely responsible for their care. The fine will go to hospitals to cover those who don’t or can’t pay in GENERAL, not the person in specific. So they will pay the $750 without a penny directed to their own care. Better the catastrophic only plan or the Bronze coverage.

» Posted By choicelady On September 26, 2013 @ 8:42 pm

Can’t reply to AdLib – there is even a ‘catastrophic coverage only’ plan for those under 30 – the ‘young invincibles’ who think nothing will happen to them. This will not provide preventive care (that they don’t want anyway) but will protect them from, skydiving, Xtreme sports, and reckless driving types of incidents. That’s even better than the fine. It will cover them and hold all of us harmless.

» Posted By choicelady On September 26, 2013 @ 8:40 pm

Most bankruptcy is medical, Sue. People try to pay for the most part but can’t.

The untold story about hospitals under ACA is that you no longer will have to pay copays and use deductibles for every follow up to your care. It will be a package with assigned things – LOTS of things – that are included, no extra charge. It is the Cleveland Clinic model now used already by UC Davis, Kaiser, other systems – MUCH better on the pocketbook, and VASTLY better for the patient. If you have a procedure, you even can get exercise classes, dieticians, etc. as INCLUDED parts of care. It will revolutionize the way we practice medicine. It already is.

» Posted By choicelady On September 26, 2013 @ 8:38 pm

With the extra money, we are hoping that many will reopen, they will expand into more rural areas, and that they will become TRAUMA centers not routine care centers. ACA should put them on a far more sound fiscal basis.

» Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2013 @ 7:58 pm

Ohhhhh-kay…

What is that legal term: assumes facts not admitted into evidence? That’s what’s going on in this Forbes article.

First – insurance is state regulated. Premiums MAY rise in places without state exchanges where the lower exchange premiums really compete with the “free market” ones. (That IS the free market at work, BTW…) But overall when people move to get health care in the exchanges, state or federal in origin, it will – and already has – driven DOWN the premiums and retarded the increases in premium costs.

Second – there is no way in hell the largest university based systems will lose out because THEY ARE THE MODELS upon which ACA is based. Cleveland Clinic’s “pay for the wellness of the patient” plan – one billing code for a system to treatments – is now being used in CA and at other medical centers. It is patient centered, and payments depends on good outcomes. It is the rapacious “pay for each aspirin and bedpan” hospitals that will lose big time, and for-profit systems will be hit the hardest for their massive over billing that will have to be reduced.

So this is mostly crap (a purely technical term) from a slavering business mag that really ought to have done better research.

» Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2013 @ 7:57 pm

Sue – they will have to take the tax hit AND pay their own way because the tax is to keep the ERs open. No one can take a chance that you will either walk out or be unable to pay.

I’m NOT sure what they will do with the truly medically indigent. In most CA counties Medi-Cal (our version of Medicaid) is already available to single adults for the first time. What has happened to the homeless is that when they hit the ER, they get signed up there and then. So that may be what will occur – you’ll get it, like it or not. When your name goes into the system, whatever hospital, Medi-Cal will kick in. That’s a HUGE help right there.

But what happens in states NOT expanding their Medicaid base is that they will continue to pay for the most costly care at the ERs, and when they close, oh well…

» Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2013 @ 3:52 pm

That IS the objection from too many – they’re stiffing us with the bill, so yeah – now they have to PAY for it!

The problem is that there is not enough money at the state level where hospitals are paid for “uncompensated care” – the walkaway deadbeats or, more sadly, those who do try but are forced into medical bankruptcy. When the state cannot pay – ERs close. In CA between Bakersfield and Stockton, there is NO trauma center. That is over 200 miles along I-5. So don’t have a heart attack or car crash – you have nowhere to go without losing precious time waiting for Mercy Flight IF it’s available.

Thanks for nothing, deadbeats. It harms everyone when you do not pay your way or cover your own health with insurance.

» Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2013 @ 3:48 pm

At the moment, there are fewer doctors and hospitals in the new versions of health plans on the Exchange than in the private pay varieties. That will increase. There is no “loss” to anyone since ACA is not intended for people who HAVE health care unless it’s SO unaffordable that they cannot sustain their payments. No one with Blue Shield private market (self paid or employer paid) will be forced to move into the Blue Shield on the Exchange so no loss of physician or hospital access will occur.

This is YOUR choice. You can keep what you have, buy still in the private market, pay the fine and go without insurance paying all your bills yourself, go into the Exchange.

I already am limited by my employer plan as to what doctors and hospitals I have access to. Unless I want a very expensive PPO – and even then there is a ‘system’ of preference – I cannot go outside without huge cost. None of that is different. (And here is where single payer would help us all, but that’s a long other story.)

The Exchanges are for people who have been desperately longing for some kind of affordable care – and now they have it.

Thank you again, Murph, for Part II and the truth about ACA. Excellent!

» Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2013 @ 3:39 pm

Curing Obamacare Fever – Part One: The GOP Death Panel

That seems to be happening in CA, but as with all new programs, nothing is yet fully in place. We shall see how the Exchange based versions of insurance companies compete against their market ones. I’m thinking the pressure against high costs will make them fold into one Exchange based entity covering most providers.

» Posted By choicelady On September 27, 2013 @ 8:27 am

Thank you for rationality, good sense, and calling out the extremism. This will be a ‘go to’ series I will share far and wide, Murph.

GREAT contribution, thank you!

» Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2013 @ 12:54 pm

Boehner’s Crying Game on The Budget Showdown

I want to give a quick summary we’ve started to use in our trainings on how to enroll in ACA.

Here is how you can comply with the new health care laws:

Routes to participating in Obamacare:

1.Keep the insurance you have now from employers, private market, Medicare, whatever.

2.Buy insurance in the private market at full market rates with its standards of coverage, deductibles etc. Your rates are not regulated but set by insurance companies.

3.Refuse insurance and pay the fine to protect ERs and hospitals against your unpaid costs; pay all your own costs yourself accepting bankruptcy if need be.

4.Buy private insurance in the Exchange with subsidies that vastly reduce your costs, tie your cost to your income not the market rates, and provide huge numbers of free services, excellent coverage standards, and guaranteed access no matter your health.

Number 4 and only number 4 is actually “Obamacare”.

Any of these options is open to you. Insurance is mandated now simply to protect us taxpayers from having to pay for your costs if you default on your medical bills.

Government will not run your health care any more than it does in Medicare. It will simply help you pay for it in number 4.

Now what is so scary about that?

» Posted By choicelady On September 21, 2013 @ 10:42 am

Although I increasingly dislike Chris Hayes and his hype. he did note that Boehner has ONE good vote left – either on immigration or the debt ceiling. As much as I want immigration reform to pass, nothing at ALL can get done if we do not raise the debt ceiling. So let him do what NEEDS to be done. Then we must work our butts off to regain control of the House and keep the Senate and pass all the necessary laws that this nation needs. But we can’t do anything if it’s all shut down.

» Posted By choicelady On September 19, 2013 @ 6:14 pm

Thank you for this, AdLib. It is damning in detailing Boehner’s cowardice.

He has a choice. He can put nation FIRST by ending the absurd “Hastert Rule” that demands that nothing passes unless the GOP are solidly for it. Boehner could build a coalition of more sane GOP plus Dems and pass both the debt ceiling and the CR, but he has clearly gone over to the Dark Side and is supporting the 80 extremists rather than the 138 more rational people in his own party.

If we get shut down, NO one will forget that in 2014. However insane is Cruz claiming it’s Obama and the Dems, only the hardcore will think that’s true.

But the chaos that could ensue form this shutdown? I shudder to think how people already hanging by their fingernails will ever survive this.

Boehner has shown he will abet sheer evil if pushed.

» Posted By choicelady On September 18, 2013 @ 8:10 pm

In Remembrance of KQuark

You, too, Sally!!! We could not be half so informed without your weekly hard work on our behalf. Take care – and know I feel your loss of KQ in those late night sessions of talk, laughter, love, and friendship. I’m so sorry you will not have that with him anymore. That is a deep and abiding hole in the fabric of your life, and I am so sad it has come to pass.

» Posted By choicelady On September 16, 2013 @ 7:58 pm

Magnificent tribute, Murph. KQuark would have been SO GLAD you’re becoming a Navigator!!!! He and I shared a lot of back and forth around ACA, and he gave me so much insight I could translate into explanations for people that I could never thank him enough.

I will miss him so much. I still tear up over bito, and yes, with those two gone, there is a huge hole in my heart.

I also want to thank everyone = AdLib, Kalima, kes, Sally, KT – who provide us such great information and good ideas daily. We would not be half so well informed were you not here, had you not created the Planet on which we all dwell. Thank you to all. And please – stay safe? We care so very much about you!!!

» Posted By choicelady On September 16, 2013 @ 4:55 pm

Oh no. Oh please, please no. This is as unbearable to learn as was bito’s untimely death so recently. I think his absence from Friday night chats made us all worried that he was failing, but this is just too hard to learn. My heart goes out to his family – he spoke so often and so lovingly about his wife – and I hope they know how much KQuark meant to us all.

I am here at PPOV because of him. When I first went on HP in 2008, he immediately drew my attention with his profound posts. I fanned him and watched for his writings. Suddenly, in 2009, he disappeared, and I thought he had disliked something I’d written. Later that year, as my own dissatisfaction with HP was growing, he suddenly returned under a slightly different handle posting a link – that must have been there only briefly given their censorship – bringing me here. From then on I once again got to read his work, enjoy his acerbic wit, and learn more about him as well as this entire community of wonderful people.

KQuark was deeply beloved because he was wise and insightful and well spoken on many issues that mattered to us all. I will miss him terribly and send my fervent hope to his wonderful wife that the memories of KQ will carry her through this loss and pain. He will live in our hearts. I’m honored to have known him.

» Posted By choicelady On September 16, 2013 @ 8:20 am

Hope and Change of Possession of Syria’s Chemical Weapons

As I noted last week, it has been my belief that the evidence – Kerry and Clinton in negotiations with the Russians for over a year on this very issue of directing chem weapons to international control – was the real concern. The threat is just that – a motivator. The president did or said something to Putin, we do not know what, at the G-20 summit that pushed Putin to finally agree to return to the international group and participate.

It matters not to this president WHO gets the “credit” for this alternative. It is and has been the desired outcome to stop the use of chemical weapons and the resulting genocide. It matters only that this agreement – to which the Syrian Foreign Minister appears to have fully agreed – is finalized.

Watching this over the long haul, it is clear that diplomacy, not military strikes, have been the desired process. Moving the military intervention to Congress would have freed the president to keep on pursuing diplomacy since the NO vote is the likely outcome. That gets the hawks off his back, and lets him proceed as he prefers. That it happened BEFORE the Congressional vote is even better.

Now we will watch the international community for clear evidence they are engaged in assuring that Putin does as he has said, Assad will do as he has at least initially agreed. The outcome is what matters – getting Syrian to relinquish chemical weapons and to do so via diplomatic means. A success never mind who gets credit.

» Posted By choicelady On September 10, 2013 @ 11:55 am