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[misko27]

It looks like from that map that my area is clean, so I win again suckers. The clean water we steal from upstate reservoirs saves us once again! It's nice to have a superior quality of life through no action on my part whatsoever.

Basically?  Our healthcare system fails to provide healthcare, and if we were to reform it right now to match the OECD average in both cost per person and care per person, we wouldn't have a deficit.  The debt would go down every year.  Healthcare reform is the single most urgent issue facing the US bar none.  If left unchecked, the economic and social damage that our healthcare system causes could singlehandedly end our status as a superpower.

So yes, Misko... health care is a big fucking deal.

Spare me. where is SalmonGod when I need him most? (Oh hey, there he is).

You know what else is a big deal? The degrading environment, our unpreparedness in dealing with environmental catastrophes (Hey? Live in hurricane alley? You've got very pressing issues right now don't you?), the opiod crisis, the general breakdown in American social fabric as evidenced most recently by Charlottesville but by so many other things as well, Russian efforts to undermine the country, electoral laws that are poorly-made at best and disenfranchising at worst, the continuing threat posed by automation to the labor force and other long-term threats to the economy, the currently significantly higher than usual likelihood of a nuclear exchange, the continuing drug war, the deadlock on immigration, the rising deficit, the long-term degrading of our infrastructure, the growing danger of cybercrime, etc. There are a million other things I could say that are all quite serious, and some are more easily solved than health care if for literally no other reason than they can be solved.

Healthcare is hard to do right, hard to implement and, frankly, bears an extremely high political cost to action. Obamacare alone essentially nuked Obama's first-term, and now appears to be in the process of killing Trump's. I am not denying that it is extremely important, and many of the issues I mentioned above are linked to Healthcare. But Healthcare is right now the only fucking issue that Congress is discussing or has discussed for actual months, and it's painfully obvious that absolutely nothing productive is going to happen there. There's a phrase regarding Healthcare policy: "The one that moves first, loses." Obama learned this. Clinton learned this. Trump is learning it. And even if you really do believe (and honestly, I am shocked that you guys do) that Healthcare is actually the single biggest issue in American Politics, know that quite literally every other issue is being sacrificed on the altar of healthcare policy right now. For fucks sake, Republicans were willing to risk the House and Senate just to pass an several universally panned bills, all apparently so that they could say "Mission Accomplished" on Healthcare. It's actual madness.

On a related note, Trump makes his Tax proposal.

[Dunamisdeos]

For fucks sake, Republicans were willing to risk the House and Senate just to pass an several universally panned bills, all apparently so that they could say "Mission Accomplished" on Healthcare. It's actual madness.

I agree with this.

Not to be a broken record, but whether my family members lives or dies or has to sell their home due to health issues beats out those other issues for me. Again not that those issues you mentioned aren't objectively of equal or more importance, but everyone is going to have their own priorities based on their situation.

Current admin is just trying to force something, anything through to save face. Nothing is getting done, not even taking a step back to GET priorities in order. Way I figure it, they spent the entirety of the last 8 years doing nothing but seething in hate for the opposition and their actions/policies, and now all they can do is act out of that hate.

[Frumple]

But Healthcare is right now the only fucking issue that Congress is discussing or has discussed for actual months, and it's painfully obvious that absolutely nothing productive is going to happen there.

I mean, half the potential trick is that this isn't true. Congress has still been churning shit out, last I checked, it's just not terribly many people are paying attention. Congress discusses plenty of other crap even with how much the healthcare dumpster fire chews up attention.

[Max™]

You know what else is a big deal? The degrading environment, our unpreparedness in dealing with environmental catastrophes (Hey? Live in hurricane alley? You've got very pressing issues right now don't you?)

That isn't an environmental issue, it's a planning/bad governing issue for the US coastal areas where there are incentives for just rebuilding and changing nothing after suffering flood damage, stacked on top of the trend of PAVE ALL THE THINGS so you're taking what capability the ground had to soak up flood waters and slapping a nice impermeable surface on top of it, these have been pressing issues for a long time, but the 12 years since a major hurricane landfall made it easy for people to pretend everything will be fine. If we get another big stretch over the next few years then you can expect people to go back to business as usual followed by shock and horror all over again.

...the opiod crisis, the general breakdown in American social fabric as evidenced most recently by Charlottesville but by so many other things as well, Russian efforts to undermine the country, electoral laws that are poorly-made at best and disenfranchising at worst, the continuing threat posed by automation to the labor force and other long-term threats to the economy, the currently significantly higher than usual likelihood of a nuclear exchange, the continuing drug war, the deadlock on immigration, the rising deficit, the long-term degrading of our infrastructure, the growing danger of cybercrime, etc. There are a million other things I could say that are all quite serious, and some are more easily solved than health care if for literally no other reason than they can be solved.

Healthcare is hard to do right, hard to implement and, frankly, bears an extremely high political cost to action. Obamacare alone essentially nuked Obama's first-term, and now appears to be in the process of killing Trump's. I am not denying that it is extremely important, and many of the issues I mentioned above are linked to Healthcare. But Healthcare is right now the only fucking issue that Congress is discussing or has discussed for actual months, and it's painfully obvious that absolutely nothing productive is going to happen there. There's a phrase regarding Healthcare policy: "The one that moves first, loses." Obama learned this. Clinton learned this. Trump is learning it. And even if you really do believe (and honestly, I am shocked that you guys do) that Healthcare is actually the single biggest issue in American Politics, know that quite literally every other issue is being sacrificed on the altar of healthcare policy right now. For fucks sake, Republicans were willing to risk the House and Senate just to pass an several universally panned bills, all apparently so that they could say "Mission Accomplished" on Healthcare. It's actual madness.

On a related note, Trump makes his Tax proposal.

Shhhhh, Trump being an incompetent boob and Congress having an inability to enact awful legislation is the best we can hope for right now.

Dunno about everyone else but I'm glad they wasted a year trying to repeal it and got jack and shit done otherwise, there are actual cartoon villains in House and Senate who are sitting there grumbling about how they "would have gotten away with killing more poor people too, if it wasn't for their being a bunch of fuckups" and if you pull off their masks it's the exact same face underneath!

[redwallzyl]

You're looking for this chart:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This chart is the communities with actual raised amounts of lead in the water, regardless of whether the provider was reported as violating the rules or not.  The chart you listed is everyone served by companies that violated the rules, regardless of whether anything bad happened or whether the rule they broke was health based in nature.

Still insane tho, I'm with you there.  Lotta people in the US have it as "common sense" that you don't drink tap water or use a filter.  Looks like they would be correct, at least if they have kids...

yup, and its all the fault of people wanting to make a ton of money selling lead pipes we already knew were dangerous. and that's not even mentioning the fuckery surrounding lead paint and gas. isn't America great?

[ChairmanPoo]

You're looking for this chart:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This chart is the communities with actual raised amounts of lead in the water, regardless of whether the provider was reported as violating the rules or not.  The chart you listed is everyone served by companies that violated the rules, regardless of whether anything bad happened or whether the rule they broke was health based in nature.

Still insane tho, I'm with you there.  Lotta people in the US have it as "common sense" that you don't drink tap water or use a filter.  Looks like they would be correct, at least if they have kids...

yup, and its all the fault of people wanting to make a ton of money selling lead pipes we already knew were dangerous. and that's not even mentioning the fuckery surrounding lead paint and gas. isn't America great?

You'll be grateful for all that lead when the hwasongs start dropping

[Dunamisdeos]

You're looking for this chart:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This chart is the communities with actual raised amounts of lead in the water, regardless of whether the provider was reported as violating the rules or not.  The chart you listed is everyone served by companies that violated the rules, regardless of whether anything bad happened or whether the rule they broke was health based in nature.

Still insane tho, I'm with you there.  Lotta people in the US have it as "common sense" that you don't drink tap water or use a filter.  Looks like they would be correct, at least if they have kids...

yup, and its all the fault of people wanting to make a ton of money selling lead pipes we already knew were dangerous. and that's not even mentioning the fuckery surrounding lead paint and gas. isn't America great?

You'll be grateful for all that lead when the hwasongs start dropping

Lead Paint has been banned in homes since the 70's.

Wikipedia says it's only found in road markings, so don't go licking those. I checked some other sites in my less-than-exhaustive research, but looks like that stuff is mostly gone.

[Frumple]

Can't be arsed to do something that looks better, but let me just copy/paste the first results I got from google when I just searched for lead paint:

Protect Your Family from Exposures to Lead | Lead | US EPA
https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-exposures-lead
Aug 30, 2017 - Lead paint is still present in millions of homes, sometimes under layers of newer paint. If the paint is in good shape, the lead paint is usually not ...

It, like a number of sketchy as hell junk people got up to previously, is not nearly as gone as anyone sane would like it to be.

[Dunamisdeos]

Looks like 44% of homes (according to the US Census) in the US were built before 1970. The lead paint regulations went into effect in 1978.

That's a lotta potential for lead. I'm looking at a report from 2011, though. In theory that number has gone down a bit, but I'm sure it's not enough to breathe a sigh of relief.

TLDR - Evidence points towards a lead problem in the US.

[Lord Shonus]

As long as lead pant is sealed away, it isn't a hazard. The problem is all the early-twentieth-century middle class homes in US cities that turned into low-income rentals after the Great Suburban Expansion - most of those have not been properly maintained (a common problem with slumlords), and the old lead paint becomes exposed as newer paint flakes off.

While lead pipes were not technically banned entirely until the 1980s, use of lead for plumbing (minus that used to solder together copper and steel pipes, which is not a contamination hazard under most circumstances, but was banned in the 1990s to eliminate any possible issue) dropped dramatically after the 20s and was almost extinct by the 40s. The problem, again, is that so much of America's housing was built before lead was replaced entirely, and replacing the lead plumbing is absurdly expensive - the typical cost I've seen for Flint is around 30,000-40,000 dollars, which is enough to buy a whole new house instead. The hazards of the piping are usually not severe unless people start dicking with the water supply to save money, as lead pipes rather quickly form a scale on the inside that prevents the water from touching the lead directly, much as aluminum almost never touches air directly due to a very thin layer of oxidization. If the water chemistry changes, however, then you start breaking that scale down and get leeching.

[Reelya]

Looks like 44% of homes (according to the US Census) in the US were built before 1970. The lead paint regulations went into effect in 1978.

That's a lotta potential for lead. I'm looking at a report from 2011, though. In theory that number has gone down a bit, but I'm sure it's not enough to breathe a sigh of relief.

TLDR - Evidence points towards a lead problem in the US.

We have fairly clear evidence that it's still a problem. Lead is a neurotoxin, and childhood exposure is linked to impulsive and violent behaviour. Mass-exposure seems to ramp up the violent crime rate (which is just induction: if any one person is more likely to become violent due to lead exposure, exposing everyone to it at the same time should logically lead to a crime wave later on. See evidence on leaded gasoline vs later crime waves).

The stuff also sticks around in the soil and kids ingest dirt or breathe in dust as a kid. In fact one of the lead researchers did a soil survey around New Orleans, and then compared that to the local police's crime hotspots map, there was a good correlation with contaminated soil and violent neighborhoods.

And you have anecdotal evidence: there are studies where they moved some poor families into good neighborhoods, and subsequently the academic performance and behavior of the kids is a lot better. Previously this has been cited as evidence of a toxic social environment (e.g. blame the poor for holding each other down) but perhaps it's actually evidence of escaping a literally toxic environment. To the extent that it's social, poor social behavior amplifies itself, however if everyone is also being constantly dosed with neurotoxins, then the negative effects of the neurotoxins are also being amplified by the social effects.

So it's not like just pipes or paint are all you need to worry about. People living in lead-contaminated environments is an intergenerational catastrophe because of how that stuff causes mental retardation and anti-social behavior. Also, with many black neighborhoods being contaminated by this stuff, racism masks the extent of the problem: the right-wing say they are "naturally" violent and the left wing hold that "the system" makes them violent, while both sides are missing the rather important element of the poor-mans environment being contaminated with neurotoxins. Science for the win - once you determine an observable undeniable element, then it's something you can do something about.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis

One example is that Sao Paulo in Brazil switched to ethanol instead of gasoline decades ago (because the place is the location of the major sugar refineries and the price of sugar crashed, leaving them with very cheap ), and it was a localized thing. Sao Paolo alone experienced a large unexplained crime reduction, while all the areas which continued to use leaded gasoline didn't experience any such crime reduction.

[Madman198237]

We're doing better than the Romans.


They flavored their WINE with the crap!


But yes, lead is a serious problem, but it's not necessarily one that can be solved. The biggest issue is lead paint on easily-accessible locations like windowsills. My house actually had lead-painted windowsills, and my younger brother chewed on them a bit. He's got a cocktail of very, very slight mental issues now. Well, his ADD is very much NOT a slight issue, but other than that he's not terribly abnormal.


But again: Lead is bad, but we can't really fix it with reasonable expenditure of time and money.

[Reelya]

It's a fun moment to bring up the "heartland institute" which is an American conservative think-tank. I read articles on their site years ago, back when they were hosting an anti-global warming conference.

One article was called "tobacco and freedom" and told me how anyone citing the risks of smoking was irresponsible, since the risks are minimal. However ... people shouldn't be able to sue a tobacco company after getting lung cancer because "they knew the risks".

Another article was called "common sense environmentalism" as was saying that it was harmful junk-science to ban DDT, asbestos, cadmium, arsenic and lead. It literally used the argument that water is a chemical, and too much water was toxic, so how can you define anything as a "toxic chemical". The phrase is mere scare words from the Left.

So, no need to guess that the Heartland Institute are not a "real" "think-tank" they're just blatant corporate shills for polluting industries.

[Trekkin]

So, no need to guess that the Heartland Institute are not a "real" "think-tank" they're just blatant corporate shills for polluting industries.

Most think tanks are, yes. Nobody actually consults experts about policy anymore; they just need marketing advice for the policies they've already been bought to promote.

[Reelya]

However, the Heartland Institute are more towards the blatantly fucked-up shill end compared to other groups. I mean I just used archive.org to dig into their stuff and the first article I read was this:

https://web.archive.org/web/20081105043852/http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?articleid=12145

Basically it's demonizing schools that try and reduce teenage smoking. So heartland.org are a living example of the kind of "Mr Burns" logic from The Simpsons.

BTW here's an archived copy of "Tobacco and Freedom" which I cited before, I had to search to find someone who still had it:
http://archive.li/kyFZb#selection-735.476-739.387

Everywhere you look, anti-smoking groups are campaigning against smokers. They claim smoking kills one third or even half of all smokers; that secondhand smoke is a major public health problem. ... There are many reasons to be skeptical about what professional anti-smoking advocates say. They personally profit by exaggerating the health threats of smoking and winning passage of higher taxes and bans on smoking in public places.
...
How harmful is smoking to smokers? Public health advocates who claim one out of every three, or even one out of every two, smokers will die from a smoking-related illness are grossly exaggerating the real threat.

lawsuits continue to be filed anyway, with irresponsible juries awarding millions and even billions of dollars to smokers who knew the risks but continued to smoke anyway.

I'll try and find the one about how lead is good for you, it's from the same era.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090207201132/http://www.heartland.org:80/suites/environment/index.html

Over the years, environmental groups have launched campaigns against asbestos, dioxin, lead, mercury, pesticides, PCBs, chlorine, and endocrine disrupters. In every case, later research found the threats had been vastly exaggerated, and that public policies were adopted that cost far more than any benefits they created.

There, they're saying the opportunity costs of banning lead outweigh the benefits. So having lead in paint would be a net positive, therefore it's good for you.