Red_Dragon wrote: 
Oddly, it hasn't been brought up much, but he's the oldest person to assume the Presidency.  Almost a year older than Reagan was on his inauguration.  It doesn't really matter, especially in light of his other aspects, just a side-note.

Time Until Trump Leaves Office

 kurtster wrote: 
"Obama gave Big Pharma a wet kiss in April 2009, if you might remember.  It was his first sell out of us common people."

Welcome to politics, kurtster!  

I assume you're referring to Obama's decision to not seek legislation allowing re-importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and negotiating authority for Medicare regarding Part D drug prices. Obama and his team came to believe that without that concession to pharmaceutical companies, the ACA bill would not have their support and might very well not pass. Politics is the art of compromise; at times one side has to give up some of its goals to get the rest of them.



 Obama Was Pushed by Drug Industry, E-Mails Suggest

Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff signaled a willingness to put aside support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and by doing so solidified a compact with an industry the president had vilified on the campaign trail. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs. 

...

But the bargain was one that the president deemed necessary to forestall industry opposition that had thwarted efforts to cover the uninsured for generations. Without the deal, in which the industry agreed to provide $80 billion to expand coverage in exchange for protection from policies that would cost more, Mr. Obama calculated he might get nowhere.


Obama's abandonment of his goal to gain negotiating power over drug prices was necessary to pass the ACA, which helped tens of millions gain insurance coverage. Overall, I'd say he didn't sell out "us common people"—in fact, he worked his butt off for them and got them a huge win. You also might remember that Billy Tauzin was the GOP Congressman who stuck it to "us common people" in favor of pharmaceutical companies...and then quit Congress to head up PhRMA , a trade group representing pharmaceutical companies.


The Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House-PhRMA Deal

...PhRMA president, CEO and top lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a longtime Democratic member of Congress who switched party affiliations after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. By switching parties Tauzin was able to maintain his influence and even rose to be Chairman of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce. Tauzin became the poster child of Washington’s mercenary culture. He crafted a bill to provide prescription drug access to Medicare recipients, one that provided major concessions to the pharmaceutical industry. Medicare would not be able to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs and reimportation of drugs from first world countries would not be allowed. A few months after the bill passed, Tauzin announced that he was retiring from Congress and would be taking a job helming PhRMA for a salary of $2 million.

Finally, kurtster, in response to my words "If you're worried about medical costs and prices, don't expect the Republicans to help you."

you wrote

"True that but Trump will.  One of his goals ...  to negotiate drug prices for government purchases such as for Medicare, Medicaid."




No disrespect, but how exactly are we supposed to know Trump's goals when 

1. he lies all the time

2. he changes his position on issues all the time

3. he offers nothing but the vaguest of promises

4. he has no health care reform plan?

Trump Taps Anti-Gay, Anti-Catholic, Anti-Mormon Pastor Robert Jeffress For Prayer Service | Right Wing Watch

(...)

Jeffress made waves in the last presidential election when, after endorsing Rick Perry, he told Christians that they shouldn’t vote for Mitt Romney because of his Mormon faith, which wasn’t too surprising since he once blasted Mormonism as “a cult” from “the pit of hell.”

Jeffress has similarly stated that Satan created Roman Catholicism, declared that Jews, Mormons, Muslims and gay people are all destined for hell and maintained that President Obama “is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

No fan of the gay community, Jeffress believes that gays and lesbians are “perverse” people who are either pedophiles or likely to abuse children in the future; compared homosexuality to bestiality and called it “a miserable lifestyle”; accused gay people of using “brainwashing techniques” to have homosexuality “crammed down our throats”; said that gay people “are engaged in the most detestable, unclean, abominable acts you can imagine”; predicted that the gay rights movement “will pave the way for that future world dictator, the Antichrist”; and labeled homosexuality a “filthy practice” that will lead to the “implosion of our country.”

In a statement to CNN, Trump’s inauguration committee stated that “Pastor Jeffress is figure representing a diverse spectrum of Americans” and criticized “any attempt to vilify this religious leader” as “deeply disappointing and misplaced.”

 R_P wrote: 
It seems he might have lit himself on fire and then put it out before the help came.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article127340084.html

15 seconds of f(l)ame...
Protester allegedly sets himself on fire outside Trump’s DC hotel in protest

 kurtster wrote: 
I think so too, but my main hope is that progressive voters will refuse to support the Democrats until they start making themselves useful. If the Dem's loose, and loose, and then loose some more, the old ones might be replaced by politicians who actually are what they say they are.  Yes that is a long shot but it is the only thing I see which could help fix this problem. It is not just about money. High drug prices are a strategic tool of foreign policy, which is why the neocons are all for it no matter how it hurts ordinary citizens.

I think the result of the last presidential election was basically random. It showed what happens when both parties nominate a candidate who can't win. I honestly could not decide which of them was the lesser evil, so I abstained. Don't blame me, I voted for Bernie (TM).

 kcar wrote: 
True that but Trump will.  One of his goals ...  to negotiate drug prices for government purchases such as for Medicare, Medicaid.  Obama gave Big Pharma a wet kiss in April 2009, if you might remember.  It was his first sell out of us common people.

 rhahl wrote:

I totally agree but the issue is being able to separate out the exorbitant from the reasonable. Even if you could cut out the profiteering, you will still have to come up with a system that pays for the costs of the aging population without destroying the livelihood of younger people. You can't do it through payroll tax unless you start taxing the rich and businesses more.

 rhahl wrote:
That was a largely GOP decision, wasn't it?

If you're worried about medical costs and prices, don't expect the Republicans to help you. 

 haresfur wrote: 
The US healthcare system is far more expensive than other the systems of other comparably developed nations. The ACA was not going to dramatically alter that trend within a few years of its implementation, and any suggestion in this thread that the ACA is a failure because health care costs are still rising (albeit more slowly) is uninformed and/or misleading.

The ACA before Trump's election was a work in progress: it needed to strengthen the insurance mandate to bring young, healthy adults into the risk pool, increase subsidies to individuals and to provide more federal compensation to insurers as compensation for unforeseen costs of covering new customers who demanded more healthcare than predicted (this apparently was a bigger problem in smaller states with a smaller pool of customers. A public option may have been able to compensate for the pullout of insurance providers from some areas of the country.

But the ACA was definitely fixable. There is no credible Republican alternative at this time and likely won't be by the time the ACA is repealed. Many of the Republican healthcare reform plans (like Paul Ryan's) may provide lower premiums to individuals but offer less coverage. These plans tend to favor the young and healthy and indirectly allow insurance companies to decrease coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. Depending on the proposed plan and analyses of any plan, an estimated 3-21 million people will lose coverage. 

As for costs...

The growth in annual per-capita health care costs began slowing before the the ACA was enacted, due to the recession and slow recovery as well as declines in the cost of obtaining some classes of drugs due to the market arrival of generic alternatives. The Council of Economic Advisors also claims that the ACA's reduction in federal Medicare payments had a "significant" impact on the growth of healthcare costs, although other groups claim that the ACA had minimal impact on that growth. 

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/02/aca-impact-on-per-capita-cost-of-health-care/
This Atlantic.com piece has some good observations and charts that show how the growth in healthcare spending has declined: 

With slowly growing prices, even rising demand for healthcare has led to less-than-projected spending, in just about every category. (To be clear: This doesn't mean healthcare is getting cheaper; it means healthcare is getting more expensive slower than we anticipated.) The government is casually saving hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare thanks to both direct cuts and other reforms. Insurance companies, despite a rough year due to the arrival of some expensive new drugs, have been spending less than the actuaries projected in 2010. Even with growth in high-deductible plans, out-of-pocket spending is actually coming in below projections from five years ago.

Forecasts of medical spending have undergone round after round of major surgery. Six years ago, the Urban Institute projected that the country would spend $23 trillion between 2014 and 2019. After Obamacare became law, it raised its forecast by half-a-trillion dollars. But the latest projections, published this month, are lighter by $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion, respectively.

 haresfur wrote:
Well if a drug price is exorbitant it doesn't matter how old you are. In the case of multiple sclerosis, see "Escalating MS drug costs in the US - Puzzling, troubling, and suspicious"; Neurology 2015; 84:2105–2106; T. Jock Murray, MD..

"When the first disease-modifying therapy (DMT)
appeared in 1993, everything changed for patients
with MS, their families, and their neurologists.
...
"The disturbing escalation
of DMT prices in the United States is clearly
related to the political prohibition of US Medicare
to negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry.
What has happened defies common sense, logic, and
the expected rules of the marketplace. Since Food and
Drug Administration approval, and with increasing
product competition, Betaseron has gone from
$11,532 to $61,529, Avonex from $8,723 to
$62,394, glatiramer acetate from $8,292 to $59,158,
and Rebif from $15,262 to $66,394. These price increases,
and emerging evidence that long-term
outcomes are less than anticipated, undermine the
cost-effectiveness of MS DMTs. These counterintuitive
increases suggest the possibility of collusion among
the manufacturers, but the authors say they do not
have evidence.

"What justification does the pharmaceutical industry
in the United States offer for the remarkable
increase in the costs of these drugs? Well, they do
not have to explain, as they are allowed to set prices
in a black box, based on the business ethic of maximizing
profit, supported by a bizarre law that prevents
US Medicare (the US federal government
social insurance program) from negotiating prices
directly with the pharmaceutical industry. That this
is arbitrary and “just because they can” is shown by
comparisons with other countries, such as Canada,
Australia, and the United Kingdom, where the costs
of the same drugs are one-half to one-third as much.
What is even more striking is the contrast within the
United States, where the same drug covered by Medicaid
(insurance programs funded by the federal and
state governments and administered by the states)
may be 2 to over 4 times higher than to the federal
VA system (for armed service veterans), which is permitted
to negotiate prices (Betaseron is $49,146 via
Medicaid, but $10,583 via US VA).

 rhahl wrote: 
The US medical system and rising costs seem totally outrageous to me. However, the aging population should be considered in this. All you old farts are costing a lot. It would be interesting to see how much more different age groups are paying per person.

 Steely_D wrote: 

 R_P wrote: 
"clerical error" 

Trump Education Nominee Betsy DeVos Lied to the Senate

There are many reasons Betsy DeVos’s nomination to serve as Donald Trump’s education secretary could be justifiably quashed by the U.S. Senate. Her long public record indicates she is a religious Christian zealot who does not believe in the actual separation of church and state, wants public monies funneled into religious schools, and has contributed through family foundations to bigoted groups with a militant anti-gay agenda. During her confirmation hearing she gave disturbing answers to questions about her views of the Americans With Disabilities Act, standardized tests, and school vouchers. (...)

Newly elected Democratic senator Margaret Hassan pressed DeVos on these claims. She asked DeVos directly if she was on the board of her mother’s foundation during the period in which large donations were made to Focus on the Family. DeVos said that she was not on the foundation’s board.

When I heard that, I pulled up the 990 tax documents of the Prince Foundation, which I investigated for my book “Blackwater.” Betsy DeVos was clearly listed as a vice president of the foundation’s board, along with her brother Erik, for many years, at least until 2014. DeVos was a vice president during the precise period Hassan was referring to. I then began a tweet storm about this lie: (...)

 Steely_D wrote:I wasn't answering, your point was well taken. It was just a snarky comment meant to reinforce your point, but way too obscure. My wife often reacts the same way.

 Steely_D wrote:
 
The CPI does not count medical costs as 18% of the inflation rate, it's more like 6 - 8 %. Funny that.

 rhahl wrote: 
What were they rising before? Was it not necessary to stop them from bankrupting the nation?
Was the ACA enacted as it was intended or did other forces cause it to be an ineffective program?
Who/what were those forces that prevented proper implementation of a national healthcare system that controlled costs?
Are those people now back in control of your healthcare? Will the future be any different from the years before the ACA? Why would you expect that?


 
And do you see how bringing this up in the Trump section deflects from the real issues:

Tax returns
Russian involvement
Corporate cronies and incompetents in the cabinet
Practical improvement of jobs and the economy for those in the USA 

 rhahl wrote: 
IF all the states had agreed to Medicaid expansion it would have helped a lot. Congress has already taken the first steps toward repealing that provision, among others.