Ayn Rand did not write the novel to promote striking and causing a collapse. You have confused the fiction in the plot, in which the strike served a fictional purpose, with her intent in writing it. It does not in logic follow from Atlas Shrugged that we should copy the plot nor would it do any good. There are no shortcuts around disseminating the proper ideas that guide the course of the nation.

Rote, repetitive description of part of the plot, out of context and in contradiction with what Ayn Rand herself said about it, is not an argument to try to bring down the country. Ayn Rand did not advocate that in any context. She said that in principle the total loss of freedom of speech justifies a revolution, not that it would be effective without regard to the dominant beliefs.

There are a lot of essential differences between this country and Venezuela other than gross wealth. When asked what someone living in a real dictatorship should do Ayn Rand answered (Ford Hall Forum 1970) "there is nothing to do but try to get out" and "if the whole world became a dictatorship, then all one could do is form a conspiracy -- which would probably be discovered in five minutes -- and die that way rather than commit suicide. That would be one's only choice." Obviously that is not a solution to reforming the country as a last resort or anything else. It is not something that should be relished, let alone dramatically advocated in a country that isn't even a dictatorship.

I voted for Trump as a way to slow down the march to socialism for 4 years. I think he will do that. Anything else in terms of promoting reason and individual freedom would be a side benefit.

AS may have been a work of fiction, but it can easily be an accurate blueprint for the end game of socialism. The typical response of a freedom loving person is to do what Dagny or Hank did- try to keep going in spite of the intrusion of socialism. BUT, AS promoted her hero as John Galt, who took a different tack. He actively tried to accelerate the end game of collectivism by simply withdrawing the efforts of the producers from the socialists. She showed John Galt convincing producer after producer to join him and abandon the socialist society. I say she was encouraging producers today to do the same thing IF the march towards socialism cannot be stopped any other way.

This country is wealthier than Venezuela so the USA will last longer before it collapses, but the end game is the same. It will take maybe 50 years no matter what we do really. We can slow it down temporarily by getting Trump types into government, or we can speed it up by electing the Obama types. I think it takes several generations to really get people to change their philosophy.

We are getting to the point that ideas which do not support liberalism arent going to be allowed- look at what happened at Berkeley and other colleges
Even AR said that when we are muzzled, its time to admit ideas wont work and only a collapse of the society is left.

I don't approve of Trump because of what he is, not because I start with "just don't like". He is not a good trend. Many of us voted for him against Clinton only because he is on this side of the Clinton-Lenin mafia and was the only choice left. That doesn't make him good. Many of us argued this beginning over a year ago, explaining Trump in great detail against those engaged in Trump idolatry during the primary campaign.

Atlas Shrugged obviously is fiction. It's a novel. Ayn Rand stated explicitly why she wrote it the way she did; it was not to promote a 'strike' as a way to reform the country and she never advocated 'waiting' for people to understand what is right by letting them watch failure and collapse.

The reason she said she wrote Atlas Shrugged was to portray in fiction her concept of the ideal man. She said she chose the plot based on a strike to show how human survival depends on the mind by showing what happens when the mind is withdrawn. She used the fictional device of a strike with an artificially accelerated collapse to illustrate her philosophical point within the time frame of the plot.

She wrote and lectured for decades about her philosophy of reason and individualism required to reverse the statist trend, but her first full statement of her philosophy and what happens without it was Atlas Shrugged. She knew she was radically challenging the premises of thousands of years of philosophy and that it takes a lot explanation. She never advocated "waiting" for people to understand by seeing failure and neither did Atlas Shrugged, which emphasized a new philosophy that must be actively pursued. Even in the plot, the strikers were on the verge of returning in the role of leaders only because their enemies had destroyed themselves and were no longer a threat -- they never did catch on to the proper goals and methods of thinking.

People don't support socialism just because they "want goodies supplied by others" like any ordinary thief; socialism is regarded as a moral ideal, and that is what gives it its motivating force emotionally and intellectually, serving as the perceived justification across society in a way that just being a thief wanting someone else's assets never could. Socialists have an anti-individualist philosophical view of man based on a moral premise of altruistic duty to live for others as the basis of ethics as such, and which consequently is the basis for collectivism in politics as mutual looting. Every altruistic act has a recipient Altruism accepted as the good provides a moral force for mass looting beyond what an ordinary thief could conceive.

The morality of altruism is in turn based on acceptance of faith, the opposite of reason. Breaking people from emotionally clinging to altruism as the good is not an easy task; it requires understanding what ethics is based on and its purpose in human life, and requires understanding what reason is and how it operates. Psychological hedonists like the fringe anarchists don't understand any of it either.

Fully statist societies like Venezuela, the USSR, etc., collapse from their own weight; it doesn't have to be accelerated. The collapse comes sooner when they are not helped to survive the way we sent food to Russia despite the 'cold war', but the irrational cannot survive. Nor does watching one collapse after another tell anyone what is right, and the altruists emotionally clinging to their notion of the good will continue to try one variety of collectivism after another in the name of Pragmatism for the same ends.

This country is not Venezuela or the USSR. It is still a mixture of freedom and controls and will not improve by accelerating failure in ignorance of philosophical principles. That does not work and is not a short cut to the spread of better ideas as Ayn Rand explicitly advocated. The point of Atlas Shrugged was the philosophy Ayn Rand advocated, not to advocate a collapse while waiting for people to somehow reverse their fundamental premises as they watch a progression of failures. Ayn Rand already did the intellectual work and in thousands of years of bad philosophy it did not come easily.

I have found its very complicated. You are correct that the only private insurance that one can get IF you have medicare is the supplemental GAP policy which pays the 20% medicare doesnt pay as well as the 15% extra that a provider can charge over specified medicare rates.

If you are willing to cancel yourself out of medicare, you can try one of the private medicare advantage plans, but they seem to require that you stay within some preferred group. Not sure if you get any benefits at all if you go outside the network- I will have to check that out.

The other option is to deny medicare completely and pay all cash for everything.

I currently have a local PCP who offers a concierge plan for $1500 a year for essentially instant access for things PCP's can help with (he isnt a specialist).

The plan I think will work for me to allow me access to mayo's specialists and hospital care will cost $6000 a year and give me access to mayo's PCP and then back door access to their specialists for which they will accept medicare.

Its crazy but I may be able to get this done and have it work for a few years anyway until the government screws up medical care more.

Obama really made medical care here worse then it was. The more the government gets into it, the worse its going to get.

Many of the problems are indeed the result of the swamp influencing the government in their favor. The totality of the members of the swamp are what usually results in something passing. Thats why I say its not a conspiracy really- just a series of swamp members agreeing on a common thing but most likely for different reasons.

I would agree that reducing taxes would allow the economy to not be dragged down by the taxes that had been there. I am not sure I would call that "improvement" really though. It removed an impediment, but I am not going to insist on the terminology. What I was getting at is that our economy has gotten used to a diet of money printing, and if THAT stops, we get a period of adjustment while the economic activity decreases to what it would have been without the money printing.
Price inflation has also been systematically understated by the "china effect" of replacing USA made goods that would be expensive with china-made goods that are cheaper and just offering them instead of american goods in our marketplace.

The drive-by troll who 'downvoted' this is denouncing the facts of what Ayn Rand said herself about how and why she wrote the novel and what she did and did not advocate. Ayn Rand and the novel provide no support for the anarchists advocating a 'strike' or anything else to try to collapse the country.

Private insurers are selling policies that supplement Medicare; for those over 65 they are the only policies they can sell you. Those policies generally cost less than comparable policies not involved with Medicare because Medicare pays a big part of it. That is what you are looking for now. Maybe the 'concierge family' plan they recommended is some version of that, but there should be others. Some of them make payments only after Medicare has paid whatever it will do, but others operate like full private plans so you don't see the Medicare bureaucracy at all, with the Medicare payments all internal to the private plan.

Many of them are HMOs where there is a pcp who makes referrals like you described, but Blue Cross sells plans that are not HMOs. The plans differ in different parts of the country so you will have to do some digging. I don't know what you will find or if the 'concierge family' plan will be the only one. At least you have found something you can use. There are delays getting into them because they generally only take new patients annually, but I don't know if that is related to the 4 month wait you encountered.

Trying to infer reasons contrary to and ignoring the history is conspiracy theorizing. The problems of this country are not due to a bankers' conspiracy enticing people into slavery.

The a-philosophical libertarian anarchists are 'downvoting' facts that contradict the anti-intellectual crack pot 'strike' schemes they exploit this forum to promote. They even contradict the reasons Ayn Rand gave for why and how she wrote Atlas Shrugged and why the spread of better ideas is necessary, which mindless activism finds "insulting". Atlas Shrugged does not support their antics.

That is why reducing taxes allows for more production. You started by saying that tax cuts don't improve the economy without more monetary inflation. Legitimate growth under tax cuts does not require inflation in addition. They provide a way to reduce the artificial inflation -- which they had better do soon because most of the "growth" since the Bush has been Federal Reserve easy money policy with near zero interest rates, which is why the stock market rose under Obama while the economy still suffered. Price inflation has been systematically understated by removing the largest price increases from the 'calculation', such as food.

What they are doing is not taking any NEW patients into specialties they havent been to in the last three years. They know they cant just cut out all over 65 people unless they pay cash cause that would decimate their business- but they can trim them back.

They must have better deals with private insurers available to people under 65 and are currently only stuck with government insurance people who are active patients, and the super rich who just write checks for cash and dont use medicare at all. I had some extensive discussions over the phone with them, and their suggestion was to enroll in their concierge family medicine program at $6000 per year ( which I am going to do as soon as they have an opening-4 month waiting list !!) so as to get a referral from their pcp and get into the specialty doctors.

You just dont like Trump. It wouldnt matter what he said or did. I suppose you voted for Hillary, a confirmed crook and establishment politician able to sell our government and line her pockets. Trump is 1000 times better in the position of president than Hillary, and those were the only two choices available.

One can consider why AR wrote AS. As it turns out it was NOT fiction really. Look at Venezuela to see how much it was NOT fiction. Her biggest point was that Galt withdrew to specifically stop the motor of the socialist world, and actively recruited productive people to just leave and go to the gulch UNTIL the world was tired of socialism unsupportd by productive people and would listen to reason.

People are attracted to socialism because they want goodies that will be supplied by others- if that is what you mean by wrong ethical premises. I would agree with that.

Her biggest hero GALT was indeed waiting for the populace to accept rational ideas. In the meantime he was actively trying to bring down .
the socialist system (what about Ragnar...)
Galt, her biggest hero, was indeed trying to cause a collapse by a strike. That was the point of the whole book

I look at the results to figure out why it was really done. I dont listen to the garbage the politicians put out. In the end it WAS a gift to the banks, a way to entice people to enslave themselves into buying more than they could afford today, a way for cities and counties to get more property tax money, etc, etc. Whatever the politicians SAID at the time was just pablum to gain political acceptance from all the special interests

I would say that tax CUTS just remove a roadblock to an economy that shouldnt have been there anyway. We currently have an economy which has gotten used to the money printing drug. Take away the money printing and we go into most likely a recession until things stabilize to the sustainable size it should have been all along.

But they are taking patients with sufficient insurance, which is apparently more than medigap. Ask Mayo exactly what insurance they do accept for people over 65, what companies sell it and what it is called so you know what to ask for. If they say there aren't any then they would be refusing everyone over 65, which doesn't sound right for a medical establishment with their world wide reputation, at least not yet.

Ayn Rand did not "make as her heroes and heroines people who withdrew from helping the society, waiting for the populace to be willing to adopt new ideas." Neither she nor the heroes were "waiting" for others to adopt new ideas. Ayn Rand actively promoted and explained her ideas, and repeatedly emphasized the necessity that they be spread. She never expected people to see what is right from not liking socialism. Not liking any of the many ways that are wrong does not tell you what is right. People are attracted to socialism because of wrong ethical premises.

She said she wrote Atlas Shrugged to illustrate in fiction how human survival depends on the mind by showing what happens when it is withdrawn. That was the purpose of the strike in the fictional plot, not to advocate collapse and wait for people to somehow catch on. She knew that better people would naturally withdraw from punishment, but never advocated trying to cause collapse by a strike or anything else. She also said that it was far too soon to try to elect an Objectivist to national political office and rejected the anti-philosophical and anarchist libertarians, along with religious conservatives (which includes Ron Paul with his anti-abortion policies).

Donald Trump is anti-intellectual and anti-philosophical. One can listen to him for about ten minutes and see that he is a blow hard salesman Pragmatist with no thought of principles, let alone the rights of the individual. "Intellectual" does not mean plotting how to win an election.

I have researched unfortunately, and I have been covered by a medigap policy "F" since I was 65. Doesnt help at all with mayo. I have discussed it directly with mayo and their problem is that they just cant afford to treat medicare/medigap patients any more with the care level they are known for and at the reimbursements offered by those plans. Their website actually says they refuse anyone with "government" insurance, which is the wave of the future I am sure. Too bad.

That you find the importance of ideas insulting is telling. This is not the place to advocate bringing down the government and deliberately causing a collapse, which is in fact crack pot as well as illegal. It does not suddenly become a solution when one runs out of everything else or otherwise doesn't understand what to do.

If that was true, why did she make as her heroes and heroines people who withdrew from helping the society, waiting for the populace to be willing to adopt new ideas? She admitted in interviews that what she intended in the book- that people would see the folly of socialism- wasnt catching on and the die was cast as to what was going to happen.

I voted for Trump as a means of slowing down socialism in practical terms with his veto power, NOT for the consistency of his philosophical views. I wouldnt say that he is anti-intellectual by any means, but what you hear from him was designed to get popular support from enough people to actually elect him. He has done a lot of free market reforms so far, but only by executive order. Those will all be reversed by the next socialist president probably in 2020.

Probably the closest to that today in the political arena would be Ron Paul. other so called conservatives are very inconsistent at best, and downright conflicted at worst- even the libertarian candidate had that problem.

A John Galt would NEVER EVER be elected in this environment, so all we can hope for is some slowdown in the eventual takeover of socialism- UNLESS somehow the populace can be educated over perhaps a generation to think about things for once.

Inflationary policies have always been a drug that cascades into failure. It is not true that it required for a growing economy. Real growth comes from increases in productivity, including new ideas for doing things better. No one thinks tax cuts by themselves create the productivity out of nothing. Obviously they make it possible for people to become more productive.

Of course they have their own interests in mind. You said the mortgage deduction was "just a gift to bankers". That is not true.

The ideologues in the Democratic Party do have a goal of complete control under socialized medicine, which they now euphemistically call "single payer". Obama was caught in a recording saying that that was his purpose, with Obamacare as the means for the transition. The left has been after that for at least 50 years, following what the Fabians did to Britain.

Socialism, and socialized medicine in particular, is much deeper and more insidious than just "free stuff" with no thought of controls. The hold collectivist and altruist premises, and have been trying to impose it through unprincipled Pragmatism starting with the welfare statism; they are not just ignorant people trying to grab something for free with no idea of the consequences. The Republicans are less ideological, but see the trend and think they can "manage" it better as socialism inevitably progressively grows.

After 65 the only kind of private insurance you can get is a supplement to Medicare, some of which are very good, but with the price rising accordingly. There are many companies with many different kinds of policies, but they tend to vary in different parts of the country. Research what is available in your area and talk to the insurance companies about Mayo in particular.

Insulting as ever. Perhaps that explains the success rate of you spreading the right ideas. Ignored again.