The Trump Presidency 2.0

[Devildoc]

I worked with a nurse who was on vacation in France, and was in a car wreck. She was in a ward with several other patients and the provider was a mid-level resident. When they found out she had insurance she got a private room and an attending physician. Money talks.

 

[Kraut783]

One problem with the German health insurance, is the long wait times for getting procedures scheduled, and the decisions made for you....like, due to your age, we will not allow a hip replacement...etc. Private insurance is the way to go.

 

[ThunderHorse]

You really need to apply game theory to understand how the larger medical system works. With providers, pharmaceutical industry, hospital industry, insurance, ancillary and support, just to name a few. No one is going to make a serious move unless others make a serious move. They are all linked.

I do like Germany's system, and France's system is similar. They do have single payer which is there for people who need it, but there is also private insurance. With private insurance you get better providers, better rooms, better care, etc. A lot of the tax burden is offset private pay.

I am no fan, as in zero, of single-payer healthcare/ socialized medicine.

France kinda sucks, love the place, but the people riot when they don't get free shit. The Firefighters riot against the Police. There are massive areas of major cities that are no go zones. Almost like it is here, if anything Camden and Compton at least during the day are far safer than some of the various Banlieues. Branded a no-go zone: a trip inside the 93, France's most notorious banlieue

I know we're talking about healthcare...but have you guys seen the taxes in France? Oh boy.

 

[BlackSmokeRisinG]

So the overwhelming opinion is we don't like the government getting involved in negotiating healthcare costs, but the Trump administration negotiating pharmaceutical prices is somehow different and good?

Somebody explain it to me.

Ok, too much to go into here, but I can point you in the right direction if you want to look it up. So the main thing is U.S. pharmaceutical companies get a lot of the base research of new drugs from universities, which have large PhD level research power in the form of grad students and researchers who can do most of the ground work that usually turns out to be meaningless. Sometimes companies can pay universities for both research and the patents on promising drugs discovered in the course of research. Since universities aren't set up to produce drugs, they get the $$$ and prestige of being involved. Companies get the rest.

Where people get in a tizzy, is the fact that as a whole, the industry spends over $100 B/yr. on R&D, most of which goes to experimental or unapproved drugs that don't go anywhere. Then there's the cost of actually producing these chemicals in a safe manner. The deal allows companies to cover these costs by charging high prices, and patents that last several years giving a company the sole rights to produce a drug. That's where most of the friction comes in. Profits.

Nobody can predict if a drug or treatment will be successful until it has gone through full FDA approval lasting years. There isn't really a more reliable system other than testing drugs on the public and watching people die etc.

I forgot to add the main point. The U.S. companies have been selling our drugs at around cost to foreign countries for years... You may remember the stories of elderly people taking trips to Canada to get their meds. We are subsidizing cheap medicine for the rest of the world.

One problem with the German health insurance, is the long wait times for getting procedures scheduled, and the decisions made for you....like, due to your age, we will not allow a hip replacement...etc. Private insurance is the way to go.

My German cousin waited years to get orthodontic jaw surgery that would of taken months in the U.S.

 

[RackMaster]

One problem with the German health insurance, is the long wait times for getting procedures scheduled, and the decisions made for you....like, due to your age, we will not allow a hip replacement...etc. Private insurance is the way to go.

Same in Canuckistan. I need to see an ortho for my knees but I'm too young (47) and it's a minimum 2 year wait for a consult. Meanwhile someone in their 60-80's will be seen and have it done in less than a year.

 

[BlackSmokeRisinG]

Same in Canuckistan. I need to see an ortho for my knees but I'm too young (47) and it's a minimum 2 year wait for a consult. Meanwhile someone in their 60-80's will be seen and have it done in less than a year.

A 2 year wait for a consult is wild.

 

[Box]

free health care is not free
nothing is free - everything comes at a cost

 

[Marauder06]

Someone forgot about the PT uniform changes...

Not this shit again...

 

[ThunderHorse]

Not this shit again...

View attachment 48908

It's times like these when I say: so glad I'm out.

 

[AWP]

Not this shit again...

View attachment 48908

Has to be Duffelblog.
(Googles)
Jesus Christ. We aren’t a serious country.

 

[The Quartermaster]

Has to be Duffelblog.
(Googles)
Jesus Christ. The US Army isn't a serious Department anymore.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Florida173]

Not this shit again...

View attachment 48908

Will be my fourth set of PTs.. Still waiting on the AGSUs do get delivered through S4...

 

[Cookie_]

I was expecting something different from a Presidential address at Mar-a-Lago flanked by the SECWAR and SECNAVY. Oh well, will the third time be the charm?

Trump announces "Trump class" Navy battleships

ETA: What's the over under the CO gets a gold plated toilet and the ships have "Trump" all over it like his hotels?

He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship as well.

“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.

 

[Topkick]

ETA: What's the over under the CO gets a gold plated toilet and the ships have "Trump" all over it like his hotels?

The USS Trump

 

[Box]

Not this shit again...

View attachment 48908

I mean, if we are beig honest, we do need to look good...
...I'm 58
...left service in June of 2017
...shaped like a pear
...and just came off my BP meds because I started doing PT again and lost 30 pounds
...and I look gooder than a mother fucker
...because I prioritized looking good while I do old man PT

It's time we prioritize looking good.
We sure as hell can't seem to prioritize anything else.
If we are going to spirail into the shitter becuse we aren't serious about being Americans anymore, we may as well look good doing it.

Otherwise - I think the talk of a new PT uniform started last year - this isn't really new.

 

[The Quartermaster]

I was expecting something different from a Presidential address at Mar-a-Lago flanked by the SECWAR and SECNAVY. Oh well, will the third time be the charm?

Trump announces "Trump class" Navy battleships

ETA: What's the over under the CO gets a gold plated toilet and the ships have "Trump" all over it like his hotels?

Nope, was not the Bee or the Onion, nor even the Duffelbag.

Rail guns, hypersonic missiles, and lasers oh my.

https://www.goldenfleet.navy.mil/

 

[ThunderHorse]

What's crazy to me on the Golden Fleet bit is how they think they'll get around the Jones Act. The new Frigate which is a partial redesign that won't be fit for the ASW role immediately is funny, like Ficantieri won that contract with the FREMM because the USN wanted an OTS design...but then it wasn't to load the thing with requirements thus leading to a redesign and delaying acquisition. If anyone thinks the Army's acquisition pipeline is shit, look at the Navy's. You can see it with the LCS, idea was great, but then Congress got involved and we built two designs. But the trimaran was a proven design that we loaded with bullshit but then never developed the mission modules for either.

We need to build real Frigates, Destroyers, and Cruisers again. Zumwalts could have been great, but then they fucked off on the gun system and now we're refitting them with Missiles? Like cmon now.

I for one will enjoy me a large surface combatant that can bring true naval gunfire to bare.

 

[The Quartermaster]

With the advancement of 4 hours long loitering munitions that can be improved upon, naval gunfire for shore and some inland bombardments may be a thing of the past.

But some smart munitions that are gun launched with the modern rate of fire as a redundant backup multipurpose and multi mission does sound good, on paper at least haha. But not a over a several thousands a pop good.

 

[ThunderHorse]

Maybe I should take this comment slightly back on the Army acquisition fuck up...we're calling the current tank that's being tested the M1A3...it is not close to an A3 model as it is a completely different turret and engine system, also, it has an autoloader.

But hey we could talk for hours about how the Army doesn't understand history and maintenance of it's history for hours.

With the advancement of 4 hours long loitering munitions that can be improved upon, naval gunfire for shore and some inland bombardments may be a thing of the past.

But some smart munitions that are gun launched with the modern rate of fire as a redundant backup multipurpose and multi mission does sound good, on paper at least haha. But not a over a several thousands a pop good.

Everything costs more when you let things balloon and fall off the timeline. Your unit costs skyrocket. If they had built 50 Zumwalts we wouldn't be talking about munitions that cost 500K per shell because we would have needed a hell of a lot more. But now we have three Zumwalts and we've stopped development of the AGS completely so this pretty sick BLOS gun was wasted.

 

[BloodStripe]

The future of naval warfare isn’t with big ships.