If You Need Only One Reason to Vote for Romney, Here It Is

[JoeB131]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).
]

Two problems with this argument.

The first one is that Romney will appoint real honest to God conservative justices. There's no garuntee of that, and let us not forget the last two liberal justices to retire- Souter and Stevens, we appointed by Republican presidents. Given how Mr. "Severely" conservative like to etch-a-sketch his views, how do we know he won't replace Scalia or Thomas with a liberal of that mold.

The second one is that you think the current conservative majority on the court is a good thing. This is the court that brought us Citzen's United, the biggest disgrace to honest government since the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the Roman Emporship in 196 AD. Judicial Activism and Legislating from the Bench aren't bad words anymore...

 

[nitroz]

 

[BluePhantom]

no it has to do with healthcare as well. For example: my wife has severe rheumatoid arthritis and my daughter has asthma. When we lived in Arizona it was easier on my wife because the climate was hot and more consistent than the cold, rapidly changing climate she now experiences in Oregon. As a result her treatment plan in Oregon has been far more aggressive than it was in Arizona. The exact opposite is true for my daughter. In Arizona she really struggled with her asthma because there was more pollution and there was a lot of dust and dirt in the air. In Oregon there is less pollution and the rain pretty much washes away anything floating around that causes her problems. As a result her treatment in Oregon is far less aggressive than it was in Arizona.

The population of elderly in Oregon is far less than Arizona so Arizona will face a greater financial burden for state sponsored care than Oregon. It's completely different. A plan that works great for Oregon's needs and government structure would likely be a disaster for Arizona and vice versa.

The obvious first point to make is that the elderly, regardless of which state they live in, have access to a federal health insurance plan; they're the only demographic in the nation for whom that's true and that remains the case post-ACA. Are we to take it that Medicare is somehow better at writing checks to provider organizations in Arizona than to providers in Oregon?

Want to know how many doctors take new Medicare patients? Not many. My wife is on Medicare due to her disability and it's flat out useless. She can't find a single doctor who will accept it. Now my father was a surgeon (recently retired) and he did accept Medicare but he was able to do so using alternate methods. According to him he would no longer be able to accept Medicare if he was still practicing today. Now if you have a state sponsored plan like in California for example it's going to add a financial burden to the state and a tax burden on the citizens of that state. That burden will vary according to the population and the demographics and will be influenced by geography and climate.

Anyway, it's not clear what you're arguing does (or does not) vary from state to state, at the policy level. Federal-state partnerships like the ACA don't really affect the "aggressiveness of treatment" you have access to in State X.

It depends on how the plan is structured. The point is that the Massachusetts plan had been custom built for the conditions, demographics, laws, and political views of the people of Massachusetts. Trying to simply take that plan and hand it to Arizona and expect it to work...you're dreaming. It would be a cluster fuck.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).

Fortunately, we Dems have you "out-gunned", with people that have the MOST, to lose, with Romney picking judges:

WOMEN-VOTERS!!!!!!

*

"Last November, Romney listed four sitting Justices as the models he will follow if he gets to appoint a justice of his own — Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Every single one of these justices voted against Lilly Ledbetter and against equal pay for women in the workplace."​

 

[BluePhantom]

Two problems with this argument.

The first one is that Romney will appoint real honest to God conservative justices. There's no garuntee of that, and let us not forget the last two liberal justices to retire- Souter and Stevens, we appointed by Republican presidents. Given how Mr. "Severely" conservative like to etch-a-sketch his views, how do we know he won't replace Scalia or Thomas with a liberal of that mold.

Souter was a surprise. No one expected him to be a liberal and during his confirmation hearings he did his best to make himself out to be a moderate if not a conservative. Now you know very well that on occasion a justice who has ambition will rule one way before confirmed and afterwards you will see their true colors. We got screwed with Souter and he effectively pulled the wool over everyone's eyes.

The second one is that you think the current conservative majority on the court is a good thing. This is the court that brought us Citzen's United, the biggest disgrace to honest government since the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the Roman Emporship in 196 AD. Judicial Activism and Legislating from the Bench aren't bad words anymore...

I tend to agree with the decision in Citizen's United. Now Kelo v. New London....that's bullshit.

 

[JoeB131]

Do you really think that Souter fooled anyone, or that he was nominated by a Country Club Republican who knew he was a moderate?

CU was a terrible decision. It undid 40 years of good governance laws that kept the wealthy from buying politicians.

 

[BluePhantom]

Do you really think that Souter fooled anyone, or that he was nominated by a Country Club Republican who knew he was a moderate?

Yeah I think he came as a hell of a surprise to just about everyone; even the liberals. Good God, Joe. Do some fucking research.

CU was a terrible decision. It undid 40 years of good governance laws that kept the wealthy from buying politicians.

Yeah those laws also violated the First Amendment. I am all for making sure that the wealthy can't buy elections, but we're going to have to find another way to accomplish it. The ends do not justify the means.

 

[Greenbeard]

Want to know how many doctors take new Medicare patients?

According to the last MedPAC report that addressed the question (last month), the answer is: comparable numbers to those who take 50-64-year-olds with private insurance.

In addition to the ease of scheduling appointments, our survey also asks about respondents’ ability to find a new physician if they are seeking one. As in previous years, relatively few survey respondents reported that they tried to find a new primary care physician or specialist in the past year. This finding suggests that most respondents were either satisfied with their current physician or did not have a health event or other reason that made them search for a new one. Specifically, in 2011 6 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 7 percent of privately insured individuals reported that they looked for a new primary care physician in the preceding year; larger percentages (14 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 16 percent of privately insured individuals) reported seeking a new specialist. [...]

Among the small share of people (6 percent in Medicare and 7 percent in private insurance) who looked for a new primary care physician in the past year, similar percentages of Medicare and privately insured patients [people age 50–64] reported “no problem” (65 percent with Medicare and 68 percent with private insurance). When these findings are translated to the population at large, 3.6 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 4.5 percent of privately insured individuals looked for a new primary care physician and reported “no problem” finding one.

Of the patients reporting a problem, Medicare beneficiaries were more likely to characterize their problem as “big.” Specifically, 1.3 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 0.9 percent of privately insured individuals said that they looked for a new primary care physician and experienced a “big problem” finding one in the past year. When confining results to those respondents who said they searched for a new primary care physician in the past year, 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries and 14 percent of privately insured individuals said they experienced a “big problem.”

Given that a small share of people seek a primary care physician in the year, annual fluctuations in these results are expected. In fact, the graphs in Figure 4-1 show considerable year-to-year variations. For the Medicare population, fluctuations are more apparent among those reporting "no problem"; for the privately insured group, we see more annual variations in those reporting a "big problem." Table 4-1 (p. 92) also shows that the share of beneficiaries reporting a "big problem" finding a primary care physician in 2011 was statistically different from 2009 and 2010 but not from 2008. For both the Medicare and privately insured groups, the rate of people reporting "no problem" finding a primary care physician has declined.

Because several media reports and association publications have misstated the numbers that we present in this annual chapter, we want to emphasize, at the risk of being redundant, that the percentage of beneficiaries and privately insured people reporting problems comes from a subset of those who indicate that they were, in fact, looking for a new physician or tried to schedule an appointment in the past year. Survey respondents who did not look for a new physician or did not try to make a physician appointment were not asked about related problems. Thus, the rates of patients reporting problems refer only to those people to whom the question applies and not the Medicare or privately insured population at large. Accordingly, among the 6 percent of Medicare beneficiaries reporting that they looked for a new primary care physician in the preceding year, those reporting that they experienced a "big problem" correspond to about 1.3 percent of the aged Medicare population. Although this percentage may seem small, the problem these beneficiaries (roughly half a million as calculated from our survey)--and their younger counterparts--face can be personally distressing and are often featured in local and national media reports.

That doesn't mean there aren't access issue to be addressed (MedPAC consistently stresses that we can and should do better); the 1.3 percent of Medicare beneficiaries having trouble should not be ignored. The point is that extrapolating the experience of one person who "can't find a single doctor who will accept it" to the Medicare population as a whole is fallacious. Two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries looking for a new physician have no trouble finding one at all.

That said, I'm not sure what access questions have to do with your suggestion that somehow a varying intensity of treatment regimens isn't being accounted for (by someone?). You understand I'm not literally talking about extending Medicare to everyone in every state, I hope. I'm merely pointing out that the people you're specifically referencing as state-by-state concerns are served by the federal Medicare program, though they may get on the states' radar screen via dual eligibility for Medicaid.

It depends on how the plan is structured. The point is that the Massachusetts plan had been custom built for the conditions, demographics, laws, and political views of the people of Massachusetts. Trying to simply take that plan and hand it to Arizona and expect it to work...you're dreaming. It would be a cluster fuck.

Sorry, that argument fails. When it comes to coverage, the ACA is operationally similar to the Medicaid incarnation of federalism (indeed, half of the coverage expansions are through Medicaid): it's a federal-state partnership, in that the broad contours are set at the federal level and the rest is tailored by the state to meet its needs.

Arizona and Massachusetts and Oregon (and every other state + D.C.) all have Medicaid programs, each tailored very specifically to meet the needs and objectives of the states. Your argument is equivalent to arguing that an identical Medicaid program cannot function in every state and thus Medicaid, the broader federal-state partnership, is a functional impossibility. And yet 1) we know that's not what is or has been on the table when it comes to Medicaid, and 2) we know that states may tailor to the program as they see fit, within certain large-scale constraints.

The "Massachusetts plan" is to get more federal money pumped into its (state-tailored) Medicaid program and to organize its individual private health insurance market using a state-designed health insurance exchange. That can indeed work in any state, since that structural design is built on Medicaid and exchange structures that are tailored by each state to satisfy its own political and other constraints.

 

[JoeB131]

Do you really think that Souter fooled anyone, or that he was nominated by a Country Club Republican who knew he was a moderate?

Yeah I think he came as a hell of a surprise to just about everyone; even the liberals. Good God, Joe. Do some fucking research.

CU was a terrible decision. It undid 40 years of good governance laws that kept the wealthy from buying politicians.

Yeah those laws also violated the First Amendment. I am all for making sure that the wealthy can't buy elections, but we're going to have to find another way to accomplish it. The ends do not justify the means.

Transfer of property does not equal speech. Sorry, that just doesn't fly.

Limiting campaign donations does not limit anyone's free speech, just their ability to drown out contrary opinions.

 

[uscitizen]

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).

Umm neither one of them.
I do not approve of politically stacking the supremes.
It has gotten blatantly political in recent years with ones wife actually running a PAC or somesuch.

And money cannot talk.

 

[jillian]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).



List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

well, i'd suggest that to you and the rightwingers who wouldn't vote for the president anyway, that might be a reason.

to me and every other lawyer and judge i know, it's the reason to never ever ever vote for a republican for a federal position.

 

[uscitizen]

I had pretty much decided to vote for Romney, but this has given me reason to reconsider my vote....
Thanks Phantom.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Good point...

If we could get rid of Scalia and Thomas the courts would start making responsible decisions again

so is it only responsible when they rule in your favor?......or does it matter?......

 

[Dr.House]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).



List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

well, i'd suggest that to you and the rightwingers who wouldn't vote for the president anyway, that might be a reason.

to me and every other lawyer and judge i know, it's the reason to never ever ever vote for a republican for a federal position.

You apparently only hang with liberal lawyers/judges...

 

[Two Thumbs]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).



List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ginberg should be removed.

any judge that cares not for any part of the Constitution after the First Amendment, shouldn't be judging the Constitutionality of any laws.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades. You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).

Ginberg should be removed. any judge that cares not for any part of the Constitution after the First Amendment, shouldn't be judging the Constitutionality of any laws.

You are entitled to your opinion.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Seems to be a reason to vote FOR Obama. The Republicans tend to nominate people who believe in fantasies like "original intent", as if the Constitutional Convention were some kind of Borg hive-mind!

Original intent is a fantasy?

I forget, words don't have to have meaning when you're a lib.

 

[mudwhistle]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades.

You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).



List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But he's a MOOOOOOOOOOOOOORMOOOOOOOON.

Course being a Mormon never stopped Democrats from voting for Harry Reid.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Justice Antonin Scalia: 76 years old
Justice Anthony Kennedy: 75 years old
Justice Clarence Thomas: 64 years old
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79 years old
Justice Stephen Breyer: 73 years old

In the next four years the president may be replacing any or all of those Supreme Court Justices. If Obama is elected they will be replaced with liberal, activist justices in the mold of Justices Kagan and Sotomayer who will allow the liberals to dominate the court for decades. You may not be overjoyed about Romney, but I would encourage you to ask yourself who you would trust to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will maintain the balance and integrity of the judicial branch: Romney or Obama (who has already given us Kagan and Sotomayer).

Ginberg should be removed. any judge that cares not for any part of the Constitution after the First Amendment, shouldn't be judging the Constitutionality of any laws.

You are entitled to your opinion.

If a conservative said that, you'd be out protesting.

It's fucking disgusting that she got a complete pass.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Not at all, but if Scalia said it, you would be protesting.