This happened two years ago. They needed to win with a 60 vote margin. It didn’t pass.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/house-insulin-prices/
The bill didn’t need to pass with a 60 vote margin. The House is simple majority, and it passed the house. It’s a little murky to me what happened next, but it seems like the Democrats were arguing that it could be treated as budget reconciliation in the Senate, only needing simple majority. However, the parliamentarian said it’s not budget reconciliation, and so it would have needed 60 votes total in the Senate to get past the filibuster, which it didn’t have.
Then, strangely, the Senate amended the entire title and text of the bill and turned it into a general appropriations bill, which passed both houses and became law, but with the entire original text of the bill struck.
Maybe someone a little more familiar than me with the machinations of government can fill in some of the gaps of what exactly happened and why. My point is, you’re right that it didn’t pass, but neither house of Congress requires a 60 vote margin. The Senate requires 60 votes total for a bill to be filibuster proof.
The Senate has a de facto requirement for a 60 vote margin because Republicans will, without fail, use the filibuster to block any bill that doesn’t sufficiently own the libs. (I was gonna say any bill they don’t like, but they’ll even block their own bills if Democrats decide to support it.)
Congrats, they failed at their evil plan…
“This is corruption”
“This is lobbying”
No, it’s FUCKING EVIL
Those people are evil enough to put money ahead of the health of other humans
And if you stand by and watch people doing evil things and just say “Well, it’s lobbying” you’re a wretched coward
It’s all of the above, comrade
It’s worse. They put money above the life of other humans. Type 1 diabetics literally cannot live without insulin… Not for very long at least (days at most).
And it’s not a nice death either. Anyone who has seen, first hand, the effects of diabetic ketoacidosis, can confirm.
We see pictures all the time of dafties walking about with signs in the US protesting all sorts of inane, brain-damaged shite
How the fuck are yous not standing outside these evil fuckers’ houses with signs?
“This evil cunt chose to kill diabetics because some evil cunt gave him cash. Let’s hang him from a fucking tree, he’s an absolute cancer on society”
How are yous just sitting back and watching?!?
I’m not doing shit because I’m not an American.
Thank fuck for that. This shit is goddamned embarrassing.
I think my country just passed a law saying that our national healthcare system would cover insulin and diabetic equipment. I don’t have all the details, but the fact that it took this long to do is pretty fucking embarrassing in and of itself.
That being said, at least we got there. The USA can’t even agree to not bankrupt people for having a very manageable condition (with proper medication at least).
Republicans Republicans is triggering my paranoia and OCD
It’s like one of those things that goes:
I bet that you’re not reading this very carefully. You almost certainly won’t even notice the the mistake in it at first.
Except they fucked up where to put the line break
That’s called chunking. Basically, you don’t read every word in a sentence you just process units, or chunks, that you are familiar with, in this case “the mistake”. The first the is in a different chunk than the one right next to “mistake” and since that chunk is not restricting or altering proper resolution (based on your expectation), it gets scrapped at the end of processing the text.
Another culminating factor that makes it hard to spot the duplicate has something to do with eyesight. Essentially, our eyes have 2 modi: fixation and sacchades. Fixation is the standard modus and the optical nerve sends the stimuli to the brain uninterruptedly. Since the duplicates are at the end and the beginning of the next line, you have to move your eyes a longer distance to keep reading; you are performing a so-called sacchade. In order to prevent blurry sight and nausea stemming thereof when you move your eyes to another focal point (same principle like a blurry image from moving a camera while taking a picture), the optical nerve stops sending pictures to the brain during the movement. Upon reaching your new focal point, the brain backfills your memory of the travel time with the first picture it receives from the new position. This masking is called chronostasis because a very noticeable occurrence of this is that the time seems to stop for a brief moment when looking at a clock and the first second feels way longer than the following ones.
Interesting, thank you!
The the the the the the
the the the the theGood luck finding the typo!
Fuck you, I spent like 90 seconds on this
Yes, more people will be able to buy it the medicine and the people selling sugar will lose some. Can’t people make bigger profit of something useful to humanity or the earth instead?
I think you replied to the wrong comment
Maybe it’s an attempt to cancel them out. Like multiplying -1 by -1.
I don’t know if this is the case with the post, but my phone tends to do this when voice typing.
Republicans
“The government shouldn’t control anything”
“The government needs to ban abortion people tho”
The libertarians and social conservatives on the right are usually at odds with one another.
Yeah this is why I hate anarchism. Obviously we need a state to enforce all the human rights violations /s
In a true anarchist society, what stops the very same people who are committing human rights violations now under the guise of government from doing the same thing as freelancers?
People in government have a lot more power then those who aren’t in government. In anarchism, everyone would be on an equal level. Therefore a “freelancer” wouldn’t have the power to do the mass-scale human rights abuses that they would if they were in government.
but also… I’m not necessarily an anarchist nor am I against anarchism
Republicans Republicans*
Can’t even read the memes… I’m going back to Reddit.
/s
In terms of the world’s wealth, if you own a million dollars US or more - you’re one of the top 1%, richest people on the planet.
This means ALL of the people in Congress and the Senate are in the top 1%, or being very close to it.
America is ruled by a wealthy ruling class.
A quick search shows that $5.8 million is the threshold to be in the top 1% net worth in the US.
You are comparing apples and oranges on purpose by comparing US lawmakers, making laws for the USA, against the world top 1% metric.
Except no. US laws often have global significance. Like wars and resource grabs and stuff. So we should absolutely be using the world as a standard.
The problem there is he said worldwide, not in the US. The searches I’m doing for amount of wealth needed to be in the top 1% worldwide does seem to be around a million dollars. And I mean since a lot of what the US does affects the rest of the world through US companies and the influence the US has you can definitely argue we are led by the 1% who are enacting laws to benefit themselves and the people in their class.
America is ruled by a wealthy ruling class.
Always has been.
Huh, I was going to comment something about how the global top 1% has a lower threshold than that, but it really doesn’t. $1M of wealth would put you in the top 0.7%.
And apparently the top 0.7% hold 45.9% of global wealth. The top 30% hold 97% of wealth.
In the USA, the threshold for top 1% of net worth is $5.8 million.
Not saying that congress isn’t disproportionately rich, but 1% absolutely does not start at $1 million.
if you have a million you’re one of the richest ON THE PLANET
The planet is bigger than the USA buddy
Yeah, but being richer on paper than some Sudanese warlord doesn’t make it any easier for me to afford a house. Are you seriously gonna argue that we should just ignore the huge differences in the cost of living between countries?
It certainly is, but when we’re talking about US leadership, global wealth comparisons are irrelevant when talking about the moneyed elites. It needs to be national comparisons.
If you only looked at global wealth metrics, you’d think the US was full of rich people who could afford everything, and it very clearly is not the case. There’s plenty of Americans living in poverty and paycheck to paycheck, even though their wealth would be considered high globally. You have to normalize by cost of living. If someone makes $1m annually but they spend $975k to meet the bare minimum, are they rich?
if you own a million dollars US or more - you’re one of the top 1%, richest people on the planet.
Is an American with a small house in some hyper-inflated corner of the California real estate market really wealthier than a guy out in Malaysia or Nigeria who owes property that’s 1/10th the price but can pay $2/day for an army of laborers?
I think this puts too much faith in the value of the American dollar relative to the functional value of real estate and human labor trading at a fraction of the price thousands of miles away. Real wealth needs to have some degree of political power behind it. A guy with a $500 rifle who can command a hundred acres of turf and a thousand other people is - in my opinion - substantially wealthier than a guy with a $500,000 condo who owes his continued existence to some Madison Avenue ad agency.
This means ALL of the people in Congress and the Senate are in the top 1%
All the people in Congress and the Senate command votes in one of the wealthiest political bodies on the planet. Having a 1/438 share in the $5T us appropriations budget is worth far more than a piddly million dollars in a savings account.
You’re conflating two things here. You’re taking the top 1% of global wealth and equating that with America and saying it means they’re a wealthy ruling class.
Which I don’t necessarily disagree with in fact, but the premise of your argument is flawed. You need to look at what the top 1% in the US is. The US is heavily skewed towards the top of global wealth in general.
It would be like saying the US is mainly oligarchs and there aren’t people suffering because Americans tend to have more wealth than others. You have to normalize it within the country – or at least against a cost of living index.
one of the requirements of getting into congress or senate should be that when you are getting in AND out you should donate any sum of assets exceeding a couple millions. then anyone wanting to use government as a means of making money by licking the ass of powerful lobbies will mostly stay away. this will not completely eliminate the problem (there will still be people willing to work for lobbies for a couple mil) but will lessen the importance of wealth on politics greatly (along with not allowing donations to presidential candidates or organizations promoting them in anyway).
Republicans are the fucking worst, prove me wrong
They want everyone poor and pregnant
Vance says, “how can you trust people without kids. They aren’t invested in americas future.”
Mother fucker, my dad will vote for that ticket and I’m telling you he does not give a shit about me or america.
I have to live here with all you evil assholes. Why would I want to bring a kid into this?
We have sitting members of Congress who raped and sex trafficked children. The Supreme Court is bought and paid for.
America is no longer viewed as a respectable nation, just a big bully corporate oligarchy infiltrated by Russian money.
prove me wrong
Easy. Every democrat is as well
So do it
Lololol both sides, GTFO
Easy.
Didn’t do it.
They are so weird, with the crazy shit they’re always talking about.
Repubs convincing working-class people that they’re on their side is the biggest con of my lifetime. I don’t know how they managed that, but it’s insanely wrong. Wait, now I remember. It’s all about hating the same people. That’s all that matters.
I’m a school bus driver and we’re unionized (Teamsters) yet most of my co-workers are Trump supporters. We even have a few lesbians and they’re still trumpers. You’re right: the one thing they have in common is that they all really hate black people.
I’m going to vote for the party that actively seems to want me and my family to suffer, because that’s what mAkEs 'MuRiCa GrAtE aGiN!
Or,
I’m going to not vote and let in the party that actively seems to want me and my family to suffer, because… bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe… LoL?
Two flip sides of the same political weak minds, both subjugated by abusive right-wing propaganda.
Democrats in 2008: “If you vote for us, we’ll cap the price of Insulin at $35/mo”
Democrats in 2018: “No, for real, this time we’re going to do it.”
Democrats in 2024: “Its happening, we promise. We just need a majority in Congress.”
Democrats in 2032: “Do you want $35/mo insulin or not? Then JUST VOTE!”
Listen, I get it. Trump’s a fascist and he’s going to shit all over the country if he wins this year. But can we stop it with the Lucy-and-the-Football shit, where we all pretend neoliberals are going to do literally anything that undermines profits for the pharmaceutical industry? Ya’ll needed the Bush Administration to get Medicare Plan D because the Clintonites fumbled the bag so badly. Obama endorsed legislation delivering bigger cuts to Medicare and Social Security than his GOP counterparts ffs. Democrats in the House Majority deliberately fought to keep Eli Lilly as an exclusive provider of insulin back in 2014.
This isn’t the party of universal health care. It isn’t even the party of cheaper health care.
Do you not remember the clusterfuck that led to the Affordable Care Act? It was most certainly the best they could do at the time, and because the vote margin was so razor thin and Republicans were all in on stopping it, it had to be watered down a lot to appease one asshat on the Democratic side: Joe Lieberman. 95% of the Democrats were trying to pass a bill that would have, among many other things, made insulin much easier to get, but they were derailed by one traitor and every single Republican. What exactly is the logic of blaming Democrats for that?
Do you not remember the clusterfuck that led to the Affordable Care Act?
I remember the bill being held up for weeks over The Hyde Amendment, because “pro-life” democrats didn’t want anyone using a thin red cent of federal money for an abortion. But this was when Dems had a 257 seat majority in the House (39 vote margin) and a 60 vote Senate (10 vote margin and functionally filibuster-proof).
It was most certainly the best they could do at the time
Democrats couldn’t get Democrats to vote for a bill every single one of those fuckers campaigned on.
95% of the Democrats were trying to pass a bill that would have, among many other things, made insulin much easier to get
I’ll spot you 85% if I’m being generous. Even then, quite a few of those assholes were hiding behind the conservative hold-outs and trying to run out the clock before they might be forced to actually pass something.
What exactly is the logic of blaming Democrats for that?
Dem House, Dem Senate, Dem Presidency.
Lemmy: “Republicans did this”.
Dem House, Dem Senate, Dem Presidency.
Lemmy: “Republicans did this”.
You’re hopeless.
So now that they did something, you’re mad it didn’t go far enough so that means both are the same.
Some 4D chess right there.
So now that they did something
They didn’t do anything. The bill didn’t pass.
It’s sure as shit the party of protecting health rights and at least proposing these things. I’ll take that over the alternative.
the party of protecting health rights
Democrats have been folding on health rights faster than Superman on laundry day. From abortion to gender transition, they’re in full retreat.
Ummm maybe we’re watching different realities but look at how Democratic states are handling the overturning of Roe V Wade and how Republican ones are. It’s obvious who believes in what.
It’s an older story but it’s important to bring up though because there’s a lot of “Do nothing democrat” BS that’s coming up repeatedly.
I can already hear the arguments ringing in my head. This is a matter that is near and dear to my heart. As a disclaimer, I’m Canadian, if the USA doesn’t want cheap insulin, I can’t really do anything to stop that.
With all that being said, I have a family member who is a type 1 diabetic. I have experienced the following, ignorant, argument from enough people that I’m pretty sure those that voted against this, at least in part, believe. Diabetes is a self inflicted condition that you can cure with proper diet and exercise. While that argument could be true for some portion of type 2 diabetes, it is wholly untrue for T1D. I won’t speculate on how many people are in that scenario with type 2, so I’ll focus on my main argument.
Type 1 diabetes, sometimes also referred to as juvenile diabetes, isn’t exclusive to young people. It’s diagnosed young, which gives it the “juvenile” title. Type 2 is generally a problem that comes with age (and sometimes obesity), so it’s referred to as “adult” diabetes. I’ll point out these “titles” only apply to when you are likely to be diagnosed with it and have nothing to do with how long you’ll have it. Type 1 is typically caused by the pancreas being unable to function. Sometimes there’s a little function, but in general, it’s an issue with the pancreas itself, which will not heal. The cause of the dysfunction is varied and not relevant to the point, but genetics, disease, injury, etc, can all play a role in it. The fact is, the pancreas does not, and will never, operate correctly. For a T1D, the only “diet” that can keep their condition in check is essentially starvation, resulting in death, which would arguably cure the disease. You can’t be unwell if you’re dead.
People with T1D didn’t ask for it, they didn’t do anything that gave them the condition. They can’t do anything that relieves the condition. They are obligated to take insulin, or die. Shit choice if you ask me. Forcing diabetics to essentially pay to live is cruel, at the same time, producing a medical/pharmaceutical grade substance costs money and someone has to pay for it. Limiting the cost of insulin to a reasonable amount that can adequately cover the costs of production is the compromise. So those who are unemployed and/or underpaid can still afford to live.
Insulin for type 2 diabetics, which usually comes as a pill, whereas type 1 generally needs an injection, can be the exception if you’re hellbent on “punishing” those that “do it to themselves”, but even for that, you’ll get an argument from me. There’s a gap in knowledge for what is proper nutrition, and how to take care of yourself in such a way that you won’t end up obese. Many people who can take care of themselves, learned these traits at home. A nontrivial amount of the population didn’t get this same education and think that fast food is good food, or at least adequate; or that frozen is a good alternative to fresh, since fresh doesn’t really keep very long, which can be true for some things, but I assure you that buying a 1KG frozen lasagna that feeds 4, isn’t a good, singular meal for one person.
I’m not here to lecture anyone on diet and nutrition, I’m only trying to point out that the misconceptions about what is good or healthy for you to eat, are very common. The education system hasn’t done anything to fix this. Not really. I was taught the food pyramid, which, I believe, at the time, it was not considered a good guide on nutrition, at the very least. It’s basically speculation from the 70s that’s essentially pseudo science. Learning and having good nutrition is kind of a joke at this point, at least when it comes to public education. Add that to the fact that almost everything that’s made is laced, injected, or otherwise coated in sugars, and you get a recipe for obesity and eventually type 2 diabetes. I’m certain a nontrivial number of type 2 diabetics didn’t learn about proper nutrition until they became diabetic. At that point, changing your eating habits for the better, isn’t an easy task.
So, I would argue that for many type 2 sufferers, they’re simply a product of a system (that we designed) which failed them. They were not taught, nor given the required knowledge to adequately avoid contracting the disorder.
IMO, anyone against a cap on insulin is either poorly informed, or cruel. If you know how and why both types of diabetes exists, then you’re cruel if you don’t want a cap on the prices. If you don’t, you need education to learn about it and why, for many, it’s not really a choice.
I’ll add the disclaimer that I’m sure there are those out there that are type 2 diabetics who knew all along and essentially did it to themselves. I will only say this about it: there’s no reasonable way to have them monetarily pay for their choices, without significantly and negatively impacting those who did not have a choice in the matter.
And even to those that did it to themselves. Why would you want to financially ruin or straight up killing people for making mistakes? That,is simply sadistic and very much unchristian of the so outspoken Christians of the GOP
Didn’t someone once say that they “liked” Christ, but didn’t like Christians because they were so “un-christ-like” or something?
I seem to recall that, and I’ve always regarded it as the most apt description of most Western religious beliefs.
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That is a good idea, but frankly speaking the reason for the high price is neither demand nor supply. It’s medical companies purposely demanding a high price because of a lack of necessity to lower it. Not that there’s no competition, though it is small, they simply cartellized and no one actually cares. It is the epitome of what capitalism needs to control for it to continue working. There’s no place in the world where insurances pay as much for insulin. (I mean insurances don’t pay as much for any medication as IS citizens do, but that’s because they can flatly deny companies any sales and leverage them to lower their prices. ) US citizens are getting fucked over royally by pharmaceutical companies simply because the spokespeople, the elected attorneys of the people, refuse to cover the backs of the people. They’d rather profit from exploiting the basic needs of the people. It could also be a way to control them - but that would be a dangerous assumption
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Oh that should be a thing regardless. I hope our health minister will manage to pass such a law in Germany. Whatever that tax is used on, it’s an incentive for companies to put less or no sugar in products and for consumers to consume less sugar heavy products. In our case putting that tax revenue in to pensions or into defense would also be a viable option
Me here buying entire month worth of insulin for 10$ in India without arguing over morality and ethics.
I don’t know why Americans have made it so complicated. Large number of people need it, make it first priority to set cost as low as possible. Profiting over starving people of medical supplies is completely ignored and instead other ethical points are brought up.
The arguments I hear most around this kind of stuff is something along the lines of, “the innovators have a right to charge however much the market will bear” and, “if we take away the incentive to innovate, these drugs will not exist.”
My thoughts against these lines is that patents cause monopolies, so they are not “free markets,” and there would still be an incentive to innovate because of things like the first-mover advantage, and that reducing costs is also a form of innovation.
My thoughts against “punishment” arguments, are that punishment just for punishment’s sake is cruel, useless, and often counter-productive. I don’t think people have as much agency as we’d like to think. In the case of type-2 diabetes, insulin is part of the rehabilitation.
I’m sure we could go deep into rehab and how it’s a net-good for society, but given your comments so far, I feel it would be a lot like preaching to the choir.
Rehab in all forms is good, whether physical rehabilitation, mental, or medical/drug related.
More healthy people in society means a more productive society. Period. Charging people out the ass to simply live and exist without constant discomfort is detrimental to the productivity of our society at large. Rehab is one tool to help society obtain and maintain a high level of productivity continually.
There’s obviously more to the discussion of productivity but it kind of falls outside the context of the discussion.
“the innovators have a right to charge however much the market will bear”
ie “it hasn’t affected me negatively yet so I don’t care.”
Both sides suck, but at least the Democrats don’t want to turn America into an ultra-capitalist evangelical dictatorship and a white ethnostate.
Gotta preserve those family values of inter-generational diabetes and related diseases
It builds character!
Anyone saying both sides is a clown.
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Today, Venezuela had its elections, almost certainly rigged by the autocratic Maduro regime. No one here cares.
Today, Malaysia applied to join the BRICS economic block. No one here cares. I’m not even sure most of the people here know what BRICS is.
Just for fun, sort this community by new and see how long it takes to find a post about the politics of literally any other country. You’ll be there for a while. Nearly everything is about the election they’re gonna have in four months.
The truth is that in a world dominated by American culture, any forum for discussion on the English Internet not explicitly about non-American topics is doomed to be instantly dominated by American discourse. If you want any amount of discussion on other countries, you have to label it as such. Because America is the first world power and to Americans, it is the default.
What I’m saying here is that whenever you see a community that labels itself something like “Political Memes”, you have to mentally prepend that name with “American”. Because this place certainly isn’t “Worldwide Political Memes”. Even the “Memes” part is pushing it, looking at what gets to the top here. It’s mostly just American liberal political opinions shared without a hint of humor or irony.
World news has quite a few threads about rigged Venezuelan elections.
For better or worse, this site has a heavy American presence, and politically minded people are very focused on the election right now. That’s going to translate to a lot of American political memes. If you want to post global political memes, no one’s stopping you, and I’d be quite interested in seeing them
The whole tenure of the Venezuela election discussion has American news media bias slathered all over it. Nobody seems to want to discuss how Maduro’s biggest contender for the Presidency was running the same hyper-Christian, anti-government, private-the-oil-industry shit that is wildly unpopular in the country outside of the bigger cities. Basically the same campaign Anez ran in Bolivia and Bolsanaro ran in Brazil. A Trumpian candidate that the majority simply couldn’t stomach.
Venezuela doesn’t have anything resembling a centrist liberal faction. Its either another term with Maduro or a full-blown reactionary counter-revolution. And there are plenty of people alive in Venezuela today who still remember right-wing military junta that ran the country back in the '50s. Plenty more familiar with the brutal treatment of Haitians, El Salvadorians, and Guyanans. Or, hell, the very ham-fisted Operation Gideon sponsored by the US at the tail end of the Trump administration.
Very hard to get a pro-Western government to win popular support under these conditions.
Yeah I have no disagreement with what you’re saying. This was also true with Russia, where Navalny was hardly left wing. I think it’s moreso the idea of a democratic system versus dictatorship.
This was also true with Russia, where Navalny was hardly left wing.
Even the so-called Communist Party of Russia is a vestigial remnant. That is as much a result of the socio-economic rewiring of the nation after Yeltsin’s coup as any functional dictatorship. People are saturated in Putin-friendly right-wing media in Russia not unlike how Americans have been surrounded by ultra-orthodox conservative news media.
What’s the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship in a nation where mass media and big business are all beholden to a handful of oligarchs?
I am going on a limp here but I recon Lemmy is 80% made up of EU+Anglosphere. And frankly, and forgive my language, barely anyone gives a shit about a rigged vote in Venecuela (“what a surprise, it happened again - for the past 25 years”) and Malaysia (“where’s that even?”) joining BRICS (" do they even get to do anything, they basically hate each other?")
So yeah, while there’s 90% US politics here, you’re free to post memes for other topics, it’s not like its forbidden.
If you don’t want to hear about the politics of one of the most influential countries on Earth, and especially in the Anglosphere, maybe don’t browse a community called “politicalmemes”.
GTFO out of the political memes then
This is from 2022. It’s worth noting that in this vote it was bundled with a Marijuana decriminalization bill, which is probably why the Republicans voted against it.
So they voted against 2 things that would have been good for the working class.
That soubds like an excuse as they regularly vote against any kind of regulation that would help the average person. They voted against the ACA, remember?
Remember how much they talked about “repeal and replace” but never did even with full party control of all branches of the federal government? I remember that. It was simultaneously scary and hilarious to see that crowd fall apart when it came to actually trying to bring their vague talking points into real legislation and pass them
What a piss poor justification. They don’t want to help sick people or get tax money?
