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mrbig Offline
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Post: #1
Coronoavirus Covid-19 thread
Coronavirus and the politics and policy surrounding it are kind of taking over the 2020 Presidential Horse Race Thread right now, so I'm trying to shift and focus the discussion into its own thread.

Picking up on those posts, I have a question for the conservatives around here. You are doing a lot of RiceLad15 bashing in the other thread. Separate from his coronavirus post and what Lad wrote ... what do you think Trump's handling of preparation for a possible pandemic and now his handling of this actual (likely) pandemic. You all see to enjoy bashing Lad, which seems like a waste of time. But I'm interested in how you think the Trump administration is actually doing on a substantive level.
(This post was last modified: 03-12-2020 09:02 AM by mrbig.)
02-27-2020 11:32 AM
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OptimisticOwl Offline
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Post: #2
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 11:32 AM)mrbig Wrote:  Coronavirus and the politics and policy surrounding it are kind of taking over the 2020 Presidential Horse Race Thread right now, so I'm trying to shift and focus the discussion into its own thread.

Picking up on those posts, I have a question for the conservatives around here. You are doing a lot of RiceLad15 bashing in the other thread. Separate from his coronavirus post and what Lad wrote ... what do you think Trump's handling of preparation for a possible pandemic and now his handling of this actual (likely) pandemic. You all see to enjoy bashing Lad, which seems like a waste of time. But I'm interested in how you think the Trump administration is actually doing on a substantive level.

If Lad would not post silly things and then reverse himself into even sillier positions, he would be immune to bashing.

So far, I suspect more needs to be done. Unlike the Trump bashers, I expect more will be done. His re-election may hinge on it. Big motivation for him.

Now I have answered your question, now answer one of mine.

What more (or different) do you think a Democrat would be doing?
02-27-2020 11:39 AM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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Post: #3
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 11:32 AM)mrbig Wrote:  Coronavirus and the politics and policy surrounding it are kind of taking over the 2020 Presidential Horse Race Thread right now, so I'm trying to shift and focus the discussion into its own thread.

Picking up on those posts, I have a question for the conservatives around here. You are doing a lot of RiceLad15 bashing in the other thread. Separate from his coronavirus post and what Lad wrote ... what do you think Trump's handling of preparation for a possible pandemic and now his handling of this actual (likely) pandemic. You all see to enjoy bashing Lad, which seems like a waste of time. But I'm interested in how you think the Trump administration is actually doing on a substantive level.

This is going to turn into damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

There's a lot of hysteria and panic over coronavirus leading to absurd overreactions, in my opinion. I'm fine with Trump's response being in proportion to the actual threat, as opposed to joining the panic.

OTOH, if he were to make some people happy by taking drastic measures, then his critics would say he's using the crisis to grab power.

Those who want - need - to find fault will do so.
02-27-2020 11:56 AM
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Hambone10 Offline
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
There is a whole lot of 'we don't know' right now. I think in any uncertainty, the President should talk about what we know and instill a sense of calm vigilance. I believe that's what Trump is trying to do, but honest people can take issue with specific words... just as they did Obama and Ebola. I know that in healthcare, most of us saw the Ebola reaction (not what anyone said, but the policies put in place) as overkill

Authorizing $$, restricting flights, setting up areas as potential quarantine centers all clearly demonstrate taking the issue seriously.

NOBODY knows whether we need 2.4byn of 5.6byn or 20byn. What we know is that we need to fund our current projections and need to be prepared to fund more if we need more. Saying 'we have an open checkbook to cover this' (not that anyone has said that, but making a clear distinction) implies concern that we NEED an open checkbook... which is in my mind close to panic. The fact is, we HAVE an open checkbook if we need one.

So bringing it full circle, the real answer depends on what's happening behind the scenes, which Trump has less control over. I am comfortable with a President who is taking clear actions implying that it's a pretty big deal, but not so big that it instills panic. All the rest of what I see is people generating something to argue about. As far as I'm concerned, the differences between Trump's and Obama's responses are immaterial... and the issues that may or may not exist take place 'behind the scenes'.
02-27-2020 12:31 PM
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mrbig Offline
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 11:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Now I have answered your question, now answer one of mine.

What more (or different) do you think a Democrat would be doing?

To start, I need to acknowledge the obvious - with a pandemic, it is entirely possible that nothing Trump did or could have done would have made the situation better or worse. Sometimes an infectious disease infects and what our government can do or does do really just trims the edges of a massive problem.

I'll start with a few older news reports to express some of my concerns since that removes the immediate politics from it.

From CNN in February 2018:
Quote:The former chief of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the decision to cut 80% of its epidemic prevention activities overseas could pose a grave danger to the United States because it "would significantly increase the chance an epidemic will spread without our knowledge and endanger lives in our country and around the world."

The CDC informed personnel in the past two weeks that it was discontinuing its work in 39 out of 49 countries where its Center for Global Health helps prevent, detect and respond to dangerous infectious disease threats, such as Ebola and the Zika virus. The agency said it was forced to make the decision because it doesn't expect any new funding for the programs.

Quote:"We can either help other countries stop disease outbreaks abroad or fight them here at home," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017. "If funding for global health security isn't found, CDC will have to retreat from the front lines of fighting not terrorism but terrible organisms in 30 countries."

Frieden, who has devoted much of his career to disease prevention, emphasized the potential danger of the move. "Not only would this set back scientific, technical and diplomatic relationships that have taken years to develop, it would significantly increase the chance an epidemic will spread without our knowledge and endanger lives in our country and around the world," he said.

From the Washington Post in February 2018:
Quote:Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.

As was recently noted in Fortune:
Quote:The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded.

That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China.

Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)

Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.

From Foreign Policy:
Quote:For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

Quote:In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

To me, all of that on the front-end seems bad. Hopefully we can control the cases in the US and prevent an outbreak. But it seems like the US could have done more to help China on the front end if the Trump administration had continued to fund those various programs. And lack of leadership within the administration on the issue over the past 2 months seems like a bad thing.
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 12:43 PM by mrbig.)
02-27-2020 12:42 PM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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Post: #6
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
Was the CDC doing anything meaningful in China?

No doubt they were spending the budget they were given, but on what exactly?

How could the US have done more to help China if these programs were still funded - specifically, I mean? How would you answer that question if it came from a skeptic who does not automatically conclude that because the government is spending money somewhere it must be doing something constructive?

China does not welcome outside assistance.
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 12:49 PM by Frizzy Owl.)
02-27-2020 12:49 PM
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RiceLad15 Offline
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 11:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 11:32 AM)mrbig Wrote:  Coronavirus and the politics and policy surrounding it are kind of taking over the 2020 Presidential Horse Race Thread right now, so I'm trying to shift and focus the discussion into its own thread.

Picking up on those posts, I have a question for the conservatives around here. You are doing a lot of RiceLad15 bashing in the other thread. Separate from his coronavirus post and what Lad wrote ... what do you think Trump's handling of preparation for a possible pandemic and now his handling of this actual (likely) pandemic. You all see to enjoy bashing Lad, which seems like a waste of time. But I'm interested in how you think the Trump administration is actually doing on a substantive level.

If Lad would not post silly things and then reverse himself into even sillier positions, he would be immune to bashing.

So far, I suspect more needs to be done. Unlike the Trump bashers, I expect more will be done. His re-election may hinge on it. Big motivation for him.

I'd love to know what silly posts I made regarding my criticisms of Trump in the response to the coronavirus.

He did appoint Pence to lead the effort, and Pence did oversee a state at a time of its worst HIV outbreak that was impacted by his decisions (notably, his opposition to needle exchange programs). Not sure how that's silly, even if you disagree with it.

Trump did cut the position within the national security staff that coordinated pandemic responses between multiple agencies - a position developed around the ebola crisis. That means we have no one who is responsible with making sure the various wheels of the government are turning in-sync. Again, what is silly about that criticism?

And then I commented about how a patient was charged >$1,000 to be tested for the coronavirus. While Ham took issue with my phrasing, the overall point is still the same - keeping in place a system that charges someone that amount for a test will discourage people from getting tested because they can't afford it. And as Ham pointed out, that guy even had insurance. Again, what's silly about that?

I do expect more will be done from the Trump admin, but it seems like we're moving slowly and are not as well primed to respond as we could have been, if we had left some infrastructure in place or appointment someone other than Pence.
02-27-2020 01:29 PM
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RiceLad15 Offline
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 12:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  Was the CDC doing anything meaningful in China?

No doubt they were spending the budget they were given, but on what exactly?

How could the US have done more to help China if these programs were still funded - specifically, I mean? How would you answer that question if it came from a skeptic who does not automatically conclude that because the government is spending money somewhere it must be doing something constructive?

China does not welcome outside assistance.

I agree that it's unlikely China would have welcome/accepted assistance, unless it was in no way connected back to the US. China was slow at making this infection known to the public and likely could have done a better job containing it, if they weren't so image conscious from the start.
02-27-2020 01:31 PM
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tanqtonic Offline
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Post: #9
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
Here is a neat link to the coronavirus info fron Johns Hopkins:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/...7b48e9ecf6

I've been following this site religiously since Jan 22nd or so, when cases numbered 280.

When you look at a time lapse of the first 25 days, it is fundamentally clear how bad the Chinese response was. The virus had literally spread to every corner of China in the the first 20 days.

In the 'pandemic' game, there seem to be two games played: one as 'stop it in its infancy'; and the other as 'lets hold the tide at a national border'.

Because this was China, any foreign effort as to the first is fooked. As was this. There are interesting reports that the original vector was the state-run infectious disease center located mere blocks from the infamous market.

Regardless, the first doctors that made public their concerns have seemingly disappeared from view in China -- they were essentially silenced in the first critical phases of the outbreak. So, for all the supposed faults of the Trump, Pence, and the CDC, the utter failure at the first phase lays squarely on the Chinese medical system *and* on the government/medical industry entanglement in that country. As begets any authoritarian system, whether it is cloaked as a branch of the economy or not.

The second phase is containment in a national sense. In this, the actions of Trump/Pence are squarely in the crosshairs. I had heard (but unverified) that the Trump administration, in the early days of this when it became the obvious the degree of the fk up within the Chinese government on its response, pressured the airlines to cut traffic to the seriously affected area of Hubei.

And he then funneled all airline traffic to 11 airports on Feb 3, right as the Chinese seemingly lost control when the infected count nearly tripled between Jan 31 and Feb 2. In addition he put into place a mandatory 14 day quarantine for travelers from Hubei at the same time.

All of the stuff in play seemed to slow the infected count --- until the Italy outbreak and and Iran news.

Out of everything, the Iran news is the worst.

I think the Iran outbreak is the tip of the iceberg in that country, and that probably a whole slew of the Mideast is going to go hot soon. Kind of a combination of bad governments, bad reporting, 3rd world healthcare, and a ton of movement by those in the Mideast across the that area.

If Iran doesnt stabilize soon, the next test will be how fast Trump replicates the travel rules re: China and Hubei on the Middle East and Iran.

But the war was really lost by the Hubei count of 1,000 --- at that point there were reported cases in every Chinese province and those cases ran to nearly 350. The geography and refusal of the Chinese authorities to act decisively (instead of the initial quashing) kind of sealed a global experience in stone.
02-27-2020 01:34 PM
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tanqtonic Offline
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Post: #10
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 01:31 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 12:49 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  Was the CDC doing anything meaningful in China?

No doubt they were spending the budget they were given, but on what exactly?

How could the US have done more to help China if these programs were still funded - specifically, I mean? How would you answer that question if it came from a skeptic who does not automatically conclude that because the government is spending money somewhere it must be doing something constructive?

China does not welcome outside assistance.

I agree that it's unlikely China would have welcome/accepted assistance, unless it was in no way connected back to the US. China was slow at making this infection known to the public and likely could have done a better job containing it, if they weren't so image conscious from the start.

+1, and going beyond that they seemingly arrested the doctors who made the initial outcries.
02-27-2020 01:35 PM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 01:29 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  And then I commented about how a patient was charged >$1,000 to be tested for the coronavirus. While Ham took issue with my phrasing, the overall point is still the same - keeping in place a system that charges someone that amount for a test will discourage people from getting tested because they can't afford it. And as Ham pointed out, that guy even had insurance. Again, what's silly about that?

The existing system is the health care system.

You're conflating two different issues. You're blaming Trump because health care insurance has deductibles, copays, and exclusions. You're doing so in the context of the coronavirus outbreak, which reads to me as a failure to distinguish causation from correlation. That all could be perceived as silly.

Also, isn't the last president to lead an effort to revise health care insurance at least as much to blame as the current president for the status quo?
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 01:38 PM by Frizzy Owl.)
02-27-2020 01:36 PM
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Post: #12
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 12:42 PM)mrbig Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 11:39 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Now I have answered your question, now answer one of mine.

What more (or different) do you think a Democrat would be doing?

To start, I need to acknowledge the obvious - with a pandemic, it is entirely possible that nothing Trump did or could have done would have made the situation better or worse. Sometimes an infectious disease infects and what our government can do or does do really just trims the edges of a massive problem.

I'll start with a few older news reports to express some of my concerns since that removes the immediate politics from it.

From CNN in February 2018:
Quote:The former chief of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the decision to cut 80% of its epidemic prevention activities overseas could pose a grave danger to the United States because it "would significantly increase the chance an epidemic will spread without our knowledge and endanger lives in our country and around the world."

The CDC informed personnel in the past two weeks that it was discontinuing its work in 39 out of 49 countries where its Center for Global Health helps prevent, detect and respond to dangerous infectious disease threats, such as Ebola and the Zika virus. The agency said it was forced to make the decision because it doesn't expect any new funding for the programs.

Quote:"We can either help other countries stop disease outbreaks abroad or fight them here at home," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017. "If funding for global health security isn't found, CDC will have to retreat from the front lines of fighting not terrorism but terrible organisms in 30 countries."

Frieden, who has devoted much of his career to disease prevention, emphasized the potential danger of the move. "Not only would this set back scientific, technical and diplomatic relationships that have taken years to develop, it would significantly increase the chance an epidemic will spread without our knowledge and endanger lives in our country and around the world," he said.

From the Washington Post in February 2018:
Quote:Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.

As was recently noted in Fortune:
Quote:The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded.

That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China.

Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)

Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.

From Foreign Policy:
Quote:For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

Quote:In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

To me, all of that on the front-end seems bad. Hopefully we can control the cases in the US and prevent an outbreak. But it seems like the US could have done more to help China on the front end if the Trump administration had continued to fund those various programs. And lack of leadership within the administration on the issue over the past 2 months seems like a bad thing.

Sounds like the only concrete thing you would change is to spend more money.

Lack of leadership is in the eye of the beholder.
02-27-2020 02:20 PM
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Post: #13
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
Well yes, the US can pay for everything across the globe to prevent others from exporting their issues, but this seems a fndamental difference between left and right here. American's apparently aren't exceptional except when it comes to funding things... and then it seems to be us or nobody.

This sems directly at odds with global green initiatives, where we seem to trust all these other nations to look out for the globe, eve to their own detriment... but here we can't even really trust them to look out for their own?? which vicariously works its way to us?
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 02:22 PM by Hambone10.)
02-27-2020 02:22 PM
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 01:29 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  And then I commented about how a patient was charged >$1,000 to be tested for the coronavirus. While Ham took issue with my phrasing, the overall point is still the same - keeping in place a system that charges someone that amount for a test will discourage people from getting tested because they can't afford it. And as Ham pointed out, that guy even had insurance. Again, what's silly about that?

What's silly is blaming Trump for something Obama and Democrats did, arguing now that Bernie and Democrats (whom have fought almost ANY changes to Obamacare) are now somehow the solution

Nothing wrong with supporting Bernie's goals... but blaming Trump for not supporting something that nobody else has either is nothing but partisan politics... especially when you mislead to do so.

Yes, spending $1,000 to test to potentially LITERALLY save your life is not unreasonable to most people. A full STD panel is $2500+

More to the situation at hand, can anyone show me where any Congressman, including Bernie, has proposed covering the OOP charges for Coronavirus testing? Maybe they have but I haven't seen it. Do we blame Trump for this? Or Congress? Maybe he/they just haven't thought about it yet. Is that part of the gap between Trump and Pelosi's numbers? ANd please nobody guess at that. Do we know if that isn't already happening? Even Lad's article merely supposed, it didn't know. I suspect there is a mechanism at some point, but we may not be there yet and don't know who established that standard
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 02:36 PM by Hambone10.)
02-27-2020 02:29 PM
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RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 01:36 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 01:29 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  And then I commented about how a patient was charged >$1,000 to be tested for the coronavirus. While Ham took issue with my phrasing, the overall point is still the same - keeping in place a system that charges someone that amount for a test will discourage people from getting tested because they can't afford it. And as Ham pointed out, that guy even had insurance. Again, what's silly about that?

The existing system is the health care system.

You're conflating two different issues. You're blaming Trump because health care insurance has deductibles, copays, and exclusions. You're doing so in the context of the coronavirus outbreak, which reads to me as a failure to distinguish causation from correlation. That all could be perceived as silly.

Also, isn't the last president to lead an effort to revise health care insurance at least as much to blame as the current president for the status quo?

Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?

We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.
02-27-2020 02:34 PM
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Post: #16
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 02:34 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

This test wasn't deemed necessary by those who can authorize such an emergency expenditure.

Quote:If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?
No. The government can respond to an ebola outbreak, if one happens. An ebola outbreak hasn't happened. Neither has a coronavirus outbreak. The government should not waste its budget for those emergencies by paying for every panicky individuals' rush to the doctor because he sneezed.

Quote:We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.

Key word is "reasonable".
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 02:53 PM by Frizzy Owl.)
02-27-2020 02:52 PM
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Post: #17
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 02:52 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 02:34 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

This test wasn't deemed necessary by those who can authorize such an emergency expenditure.

Quote:If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?
No. The government can respond to an ebola outbreak, if one happens. An ebola outbreak hasn't happened. Neither has a coronavirus outbreak. The government should not waste its budget for those emergencies by paying for every panicky individuals' rush to the doctor because he sneezed.

Quote:We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.

Key word is "reasonable".

The test was deemed necessary - the guy had been in China within the last month and presented flu-like symptoms. He then was left with a $1,000 bill post-insurance.

Doesn't that sound like a reasonable case to test for coronavirus?
02-27-2020 02:56 PM
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Frizzy Owl Offline
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Post: #18
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 02:56 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 02:52 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 02:34 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

This test wasn't deemed necessary by those who can authorize such an emergency expenditure.

Quote:If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?
No. The government can respond to an ebola outbreak, if one happens. An ebola outbreak hasn't happened. Neither has a coronavirus outbreak. The government should not waste its budget for those emergencies by paying for every panicky individuals' rush to the doctor because he sneezed.

Quote:We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.

Key word is "reasonable".

The test was deemed necessary - the guy had been in China within the last month and presented flu-like symptoms. He then was left with a $1,000 bill post-insurance.

Doesn't that sound like a reasonable case to test for coronavirus?

Deemed necessary by whom?

There's your panic for you - China's a big place and the vast majority of people there don't have coronavirus. The rest of the world is wildly overstating the risks of contracting coronavirus by being in China, and now people are panicking.

You're also drawing comparisons to Ebola. If you contract Ebola, you will very likely die. If you contract coronavirus, you almost certainly will not die and you might not even know you have it. Can you see a shade of grey in there, or are you yielding to panic?
02-27-2020 03:02 PM
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Hambone10 Offline
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Post: #19
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 02:34 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

Because it would be cost-prohibitive. Bernie tried to put that in New Hampshire and voters balked.

Can you do it? Of course. You can do anything Congress passes and the SCOTUS doesn't say is UnConstitutional. I can't see how they would say that such a thing were unconstitutional.

My issue is with placing 'blame' for us not being there. We're not there because voters haven't yet demanded it... or at least neither party has viewed it that way.

Quote:If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?

oh come on. First of all, nobody with Ebola is sweating their deductible... at least not for long

Quote:We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.
poor wording, because we'd put them in hiding if they were.

We don't do that for HIV, but it's a crime to be careless about it. Plenty of testing costs much more than this.

As I've said numerous times now... it depends on how serious something gets. While opinions can vary, you can't anticipate what the next issue is. What you can do is a) just do as you suggest and cover anything any doctor anywhere thinks appropriate (which demonstrably will lead to over-use, because the risk would be in NOT testing for something and there would literally be zero risk for over-testing. No system anywhere does this) or b) establish specific guidelines... i.e. a 'state of emergency'... in which case we're essentially talking marshall law. There are plenty of people like JWs who wouldn't seek testing... as well as people who just don't like doctors/hospitals... you'd have to MAKE them go test. or c) you do it on a case-by-case basis... either person by person or virus by virus.

I'd note that your sample guy,. you said he volunteered for testing, but then said... if I test positive, just discharge me. That's why I say martial law. If someone can leave and refuse care, it's no different from them not knowing which virus they have.

Let me be clear about something here....
Almost anything will kill you if you are compromised enough or ignore it long enough... Lots of things are easily communicable. Certainly there are things that we all agree at least for the moment are so dangerous as to warrant special treatment, but H1N1 was a pandemic recently and now it's basically nothing. Ebola as well. Very soon, this will be manageable as well.

Covering 'everything a doctor thinks necessary' would explode the cost of healthcare even more than has been proposed thus far... and even that assumes that we had or could create the bandwidth to administer and evaluate the tests.

Is it reasonable? Only if you assume that every other system in the world is unreasonable.
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2020 03:31 PM by Hambone10.)
02-27-2020 03:19 PM
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ruowls Offline
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Post: #20
RE: Coronoavirus Virus thread (we're all gonna die!)
(02-27-2020 03:19 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  
(02-27-2020 02:34 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Maybe I'm missing how our government operates, but I don't see why the feds don't basically put in place a policy of reimbursing all costs for tests that are deemed necessary by doctors.

Because it would be cost-prohibitive. Bernie tried to put that in New Hampshire and voters balked.

Can you do it? Of course. You can do anything Congress passes and the SCOTUS doesn't say is UnConstitutional. I can't see how they would say that such a thing were unconstitutional.

My issue is with placing 'blame' for us not being there. We're not there because voters haven't yet demanded it... or at least neither party has viewed it that way.

Quote:If we can't do that, are we saying the federal government is hamstrung from responding to, say, an ebola outbreak, because of insurance companies?

oh come on. First of all, nobody with Ebola is sweating their deductible... at least not for long

Quote:We need to make sure that anyone with a reasonable suspicion of having this bug doesn't go into hiding because they think they'll be slapped with a bill they can't afford.
poor wording, because we'd put them in hiding if they were.

We don't do that for HIV, but it's a crime to be careless about it. Plenty of testing costs much more than this.

As I've said numerous times now... it depends on how serious something gets. While opinions can vary, you can't anticipate what the next issue is. What you can do is a) just do as you suggest and cover anything any doctor anywhere thinks appropriate (which demonstrably will lead to over-use, because the risk would be in NOT testing for something and there would literally be zero risk for over-testing. No system anywhere does this) or b) establish specific guidelines... i.e. a 'state of emergency'... in which case we're essentially talking marshall law. There are plenty of people like JWs who wouldn't seek testing... as well as people who just don't like doctors/hospitals... you'd have to MAKE them go test. or c) you do it on a case-by-case basis... either person by person or virus by virus.

I'd note that your sample guy,. you said he volunteered for testing, but then said... if I test positive, just discharge me. That's why I say martial law. If someone can leave and refuse care, it's no different from them not knowing which virus they have.

Let me be clear about something here....
Almost anything will kill you if you are compromised enough or ignore it long enough... Lots of things are easily communicable. Certainly there are things that we all agree at least for the moment are so dangerous as to warrant special treatment, but H1N1 was a pandemic recently and now it's basically nothing. Ebola as well. Very soon, this will be manageable as well.

Covering 'everything a doctor thinks necessary' would explode the cost of healthcare even more than has been proposed thus far... and even that assumes that we had or could create the bandwidth to administer and evaluate the tests.

Is it reasonable? Only if you assume that every other system in the world is unreasonable.

Oh
I didn't know doctors were that clueless.
Unfortunately, there may be some validity to that line of thinking.
02-27-2020 03:51 PM
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