Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) which was supposed to “repeal and replace” Obamacare did this earlier today. It’s hard to find an objective, non-political analysis of the bill, so, we will make do with what Wikipedia said.
The act would allow states to continue to enroll persons in the ACA Medicaid expansion through January 1, 2020, and would disallow further enrollment after that date. The AHCA will include age-based tax credits for those who earn less than $75,000, or $150,000 for joint filers. The bill would require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. The AHCA uses a standard of ‘continuous coverage’, defined by a 63-day coverage gap, where an individual who currently has insurance and is changing insurers will not pay a higher rate with their new insurer. Individuals who wish to buy insurance but are outside of the coverage gap will pay a 30 percent premium surcharge for one year and then return to standard rates. Both healthy and the sick are required to pay the surcharge.
IMHO, none of that sounds like an appeal of Obamacare.
The Republicans were proud that the bill would have replaced Centrally-Planned Medicaid with bloc grants to the states; which is a good idea on its own, but does nothing to address the cost drivers in Obamacare that have led to soaring premiums, outrageous deductibles, and rising expenses that have been called the Obamacare “Death Spiral.”
Moderate Republicans — who, contrary to left-wing propaganda make up the majority of the Republican caucus (only 30 of 237 congressional Republicans belong to the conservative Freedom Caucus) — balked at repealing the parts of Obamacare that were “popular,” i.e. the subsidies, the requirement for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, and the expansion of Medicaid in 31 states. (Supposedly, Medicaid subsidies for the expansion were to be phased out after a few years, but everyone knew this was a lie/budget gimmick to hide the cost.)
The requirement that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions is a huge cost driver. It’s essentially saying that you can wreck your car, buy car insurance the next day, and have the insurance company buy you a new car.
The bill also did not address another significant cost-driver, the Essential Health Benefits part of Obamacare. This is the part wherein a bureaucrat at the Department of Health and Human Services forces me to buy a policy covering mastectomies, mammograms, maternity care, drug rehab, and sex reassignments even though I will never have any need of those things.
All right, then. So… according to the moderates and the Idiocracy we *have* to have expanded MedicAid coverage and we *have* to cover the pre-existing conditions of people who were too f–king irresponsible to buy health insurance.
OK, let me offer a Deplorable Proposal to solve that problem. 1. Everybody with a pre-existing conditions gets to go into Medicaid. #2. The Medicaid tax is tripled to cover all of those people and the people covered under the original expansion because, according to John Kasich, that’s what Jesus wanted us to do.
Yeah, I’m calling for a tax increase. No kidding. No fooling around. I’m serious.
If you’re going to virtue signal about how damn much you care about the poor, put some of your own damn skin in the game for once.
If we’re going to continue with this stupid idea that people have no personal responsibility for their own health care, then let’s go balls-to-the-wall, baby.
Here is a *really* Deplorable offering —
* get the federal government utterly out of “health care”, whether trying either to manage or to subsidize the “health care system”, either in whole or in part;
similarly —
* get the federal government utterly out of “education”, whether trying either to manage or to subsidize the “educational system”, either in whole or in part;
I sense some bitterness.
As you said, yeah, let’s go to the Eurodumbian model at full bore.
Thank you for reminding me why the contempt I have for most of the “GOP”, too.
Obamacare has been jamming people into Medicaid since its inception because it takes the place of insurance and counts as coverage under Obamacare. Medicaid is an unfunded entitlement.
For purposes of accounting, Obamacare counts the people receiving Medicaid as insured under Obamacare, but they are not “costs” under Obamacare. So every new Medicaid recipient actually lowers the cost of the per patient costs of Obamacare. Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. It is sham bookkeeping.
The aim of Obamacare was to crash medical care systems and bring everyone into a government run and government paid system. “Single payer is their favorite euphemism.
Medicaid is hemorrhaging and we have no option but to address the funding problem. What the Obama administration did by pouring people onto the Medicaid roles was essentially ignored by the press, the republicans and especially the DemonizingRats. But it would be an error to think that establishment was unaware of the rearranging of the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state.
If Obamacare is going to allowed to blow up, the Republicans should at least force the Democrats to defeat a repeal bill in the Senate.
Ah, but the 21st Century version of Claude Pepper was yelling on the floor of the House today about how health care is “not a privilege, but a right”. (All the while promoting his version of a “Medicare For All” bill. Good luck with that, John Lewis.)
When you have that dual mentality out there (health care is a right, Medicare-4-All will solve all the problems), you can’t have a half-assed bill. There has to be a creative solution that will bring all the Republican elements on board (House, Senate, White House, non-leftist supporters). That requires plenty of meetings over time and a unified front. Everyone just got on the “Git ‘er done!” wagon and the wheels came off before they got anywhere.
I wonder if any of the people supporting the Medicaid provisions are the people on medicaid who know how crappy it is?
Doctor’s can only charge Medicaid rates for patients with Medicaid. Those rates are often below the cost of the actual service, making Medicaid patients charity cases by necessity. The more people there are on Medicaid, the fewer doctors they can find, because doctors can only accept so many charity cases.
Which is why even states with Republican governors were clamoring to use the Medicaid expansion provision. Quite frankly, I don’t blame them and think the hate they received from the right was misplaced. If you are responsible for a budget where you have to pay for stuff that the Feds say is a requirement for your citizens to have, you need to find a piggy bank to cover it. In governmental jurisdictions where an endless line of credit isn’t possible, you are going to do that by whatever means necessary, including taking filthy lucre from Uncle Sam.
While we’re on it, Medicaid is another panacea for some of the nation’s healthcare ills, yet it suffers from other aspects of the health insurance problem: providers don’t have to accept it, reimbursement rates are low, and there continue to be studies that show a higher incidence of complications (including higher mortality) for those who use it. It is to health insurance what The Original Hamburger Stand is to fine dining.
I’m livid. The original idea, of those that supported Trump, was the :::Repeal of Obamacare:::. The rewrite of history by some people, including Hannity to whom I usually agree, that the GOP has had 7 years to do this, is utter BS. They only promised Repeal, Repeal, Repeal.
Repeal of Obamacare needs to happen & Trump is more than capable of explaining to the American People that any ensuing problems before a subsequent Replacement, are Owned by the Democratic Party, Obama, Pelosi & the now extinct Reid.
Obamacare needs to go away. Whoever & whatever can reinforce medicare & medicaid to take up the slack & people that boob & cry about it, can just go straight to hell. They’re not the ones that voted for Trump or for the GOP. How difficult is this to understand?
I say cut it completely out and rip it off like a bandage. Let the chips fall where they may. I refuse to be held hostage by whining of people will die if we do this or do that. I’m so sick of it, I say so be it. Why put everyone else through misery. If people die they die. I am not my brother’s keeper. I would kill my own brother if I can keep all the money that this govt has bled from me.
The GOP “leadership” has had EIGHT YEARS to work-out an acceptable and logical policy alternative to the ACA. That’s longer than WW2. Twice as long as WW1! Most parliamentary governments would have failed for the same performance with new elections-called. Certainly the PM would be forced to resign…
Is the GOP incapable of governing??
While it’s an embarrassment to Pres. Trump. It’s a disaster for Speaker Ryan, but no-one actually wants his job…or his head on a pike. [**/sad]
Except I don’t remember one substantial mention, prior to Trump, of replacing Obamacare. What’s with Paul Ryan not insisting on a full repeal before anything else? The Tea Party people first jumped on Trump’s train & comprise his absolute base, cheered his repeal & went ahead & cheered the addition of replacement. The repeal hasn’t happened. It’s needs to go NOW. Otherwise, Trump will serve one term & the next midterm will indeed be a bloodbath. This is all so basic. Any repeal mention was only by wobbly knees who didn’t understand that replacing cancer with a cancer isn’t a solution. Any problems? That’s the Democrats fault & Mitch, Paul & Donald can learn to open their damn mouths & communicate like any Junior High school speech winner.
“There has to be a creative solution that will bring all the Republican elements on board”
They have one, it’s called Obamacare. Obama took an old school 1990’s era Republican plan and made it his own.
Conservatives have been so blinded by their hatred of Obama they never realized that they have the healthcare format they always wanted.
Now they just need to tweak it a bit instead of throwing it away.
I’m no expert in Obamacare, beyond the fact I got fined $3,500 something by the IRS on the 2014-2015 fiscal year only because I missed months of coverage…
… but, oh, I’m sorry, bear with me, Feds, it’s just I lost my job a few months after I got served the divorce papers (2014); but, alright, I took note and learned your interesting lesson: let’s just get the crappiest and cheapest coverage from now on, while crossing fingers I won’t get myself something worse than a stupid cold, right?
Sweet Lord Jesus, how I hated socialism and Kommunifornia at the time. So glad it’s behind me now.
/rant
PS. Whodathunk I’d wish to experiment with GOP nutjobs and a baseball, now?
Repeal this ObamaCRAP and replace it with NOTHING for a kitten’s life sake!
* and a baseball BAT
Excuse me, #11 little letter mike. The GOP never wanted Government Healthcare. That is a lie & the hatred the Conservatives [big C] have had for Obongo has been over this socialist government lame takeover of healthcare. Yup, there was an actual reason why the idiot radical was despised. Because of Obamacare. Pretending that the GOP wanted some sort of replacement, just doesn’t fly.
People like you? You were being thrown a bone by Trump but b!tched about it anyway. Guess what? There will be a full repeal now because the storm has just started & Trump isn’t stupid. Just slow on the uptake on this matter.
Elections have consequences, Lib.
11. Jesus wept. You are an imbecile. The only people who want government run hellth care are Fascists like you.
Anyone that’s paid attention knows that it wasn’t the f Dems that tanked this thing. It was the Conservatives that didn’t want obamacare lite. So basic. So all the little Libs can rejoice all they please. Obamacare will be going away. The Libs are irrelevant! This is internal to the Right.
I have learned to wait, when it comes to Trump. This time it didn’t pan out. It will. I supported Trump, helped him win, did my little bit. This isn’t acceptable. If I were a Lib I’d shut my trap & hope for the best. That boat has sailed, though.
Hanover
Check out this from that liberal rag Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/10/20/how-a-conservative-think-tank-invented-the-individual-mandate/#5eb0ffb61877
“Elections have consequences, Lib”
True enough. So govern!
Whatever happens, I’m not going to only try raising my hopes 0.001 inch higher : I *already* know the sucker I am will just keep paying more taxes, and won’t be able to vote against it (for, not a citizen) —
good luck, America, hopefully your ’68 hippies in charge are getting closer to die off soon enough, either that, or your shrinking middle class will get tired to the breaking point of bending over so low, that they can watch (upside down) the hordes of multiculturally enriching “refugees” enthusiastically rushing in to partake in the Great Welfare Fest Ongoing.
Lobogris
Obamacare isn’t government run healthcare. It’s a law mandating everyone has access health insurance.
The whole point is to stop “free riders” by ensuring those who can pay for HC do.
This is something conservatives used to support
(Grrrrrrrrrrr)
What the… ?
Now that’s interesting.
Please call the IRS on my behalf. It seems they didn’t get the memo.
I’ll be infinitely grateful.
#18, mike. Forbes is Establishment & they’re out the door. I wouldn’t bother with them & won’t follow the link. Everything I’ve written is just the way it is. Sorry, if reality doesn’t fit your narrative & as far as “so govern” is concerned. That’s also a lame Leftie narrative. So desperate to find catch phrases nowadays. People are governing. A legislative fail is what it is. There’s always going to be a battle lost. In the long run, the tanking of the GOP’s replacement will be just fine. People like you should have hoped that it had gone through. Though it was never to happen. My personal rage of the moment is for the purpose of putting the ship back on course, repealing obamacare & stickimg it to people like you. Whining poor people can suck it up & figure it out on their own. No more handouts. The conservatives were the engine that made Trump president. Give it some more thought on your own.
Sick to your stomach of all this nonsense?
Meet the 4 page long* alternative:
Rand Paul’s Obamacare Replacement Act
https://www.paul.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ObamacareReplacementActSections.pdf
It’s not “replace with nothing”, but we’re getting close.
Good job, Rand.
* Nope, no missing zeros. Just 4 pages. Beat that.
“Forbes is Establishment & they’re out the door. I wouldn’t bother with them & won’t follow the link. Everything I’ve written is just the way it is. Sorry, if reality doesn’t fit your narrative”
I’d like you to really think about this.
You tell me you won’t look at simple facts. Then you tell me that what you have written is “Just the way it is”
You refuse to learn and insist on being ignorant then you claim reality is a “narrative”
What the heck is wrong with you? Learn, grow become a better human
(Off topic) meanwhile, on the judiciary side of things…
Gorsuch’s greatest comebacks to the Democrats’ “grilling him”
https://youtu.be/Rqdw9h6cD6U
🙂
Noted KKK Defender Mikey wants people to ‘grow up’?
does anybody think the republicans really wanted to repeal Obamacare? this law does more to increase the power of the politician over the people as much as any law in our country’s history. as to whether it is a good law or not, all you have to know is that the people that voted for it didn’t want to be covered by it.
littlelettermike,the fascist is merely the “talking points” carrier pigeon for the DemonizingRats. He does not come here to inform you, he comes here to troll you. The instant you put him on a spot which his talking points can’t handle, he runs away.
Obamacare is not a rewrite of some Republican wet dream. That is a distraction so that people like Cashole and littlelettermike,the fascist can babble off topic and lie, distort, skew, equivocate, contort, posture, adulterate, corrupt, pollute and pervert the concept of any sort of an honest exchange of points of view.
Robert Creamer built the rough draft of Obamacare in 2006 while serving five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest. You can read about it in his instruction manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).
Creamer and the subsequent architects of Obamacare were not aiming for it to succeed, they used it as a Trojan Horse which would leave the insurance companies and the health care consumers is such disarray that the only answer would be “single payer” health care. That is a euphemism for nationalized, government run, taxpayer financed health care. The elite could alway afford concierge health care and the rest of us would get triaged by overwhelmed medics.
Now watch this:
littlelettermike,the fascist tell me where I have got this wrong and show me the evidence.
[The sound you do not hear is the scurrying away of little fascist cockroach feet. He will hide behind the refrigerator until he thinks it is safe to come out again.]
Sorry Cyril , little letter mike is right about the origins of Obamacare. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, Jonathan Gruber originally sold the Heritage Foundation the concept. It then got picked up by the government of Massachusetts.( Mitt Romney) Where it’s failing. A real solution is on the horizon, with or without government, Dr Felix Umber’s Atlas health care system. $ 50 a month for the care you need. Sean Hannity has been on this like white on rice. It covers the basics so all else that is required is a catastrophic insurance plan. With Obamacare dying on the vine , there now is a chance for real innovation.
Bravo, V, good one! That Kasich, my God he sends worse than a Democrat! What a friggin RINO!
From a strictly realpolitik perspective, it’s very, very difficult to repeal a subsidy once it is put in place. Eisenhower once mused that if he tried to repeal farm subsidies, he may as well hang himself for all the good it would do his presidency.
As for why they waited eight years to start working on it, I think a lot of Republicans were content to play the permanent minority party, and were only talking “repeal and replace” to get votes.
Idiots, the lot of them. Whatever abuse Trump rains down on them is richly deserved.
saig @#28 is dead on it:
The Republican and the Democrats in the House and the Senate are totally owned by the lobbyists who actually write the legislation in the sense that their interests must be served in order for the election money to flow to each captive candidate.
The rogue members of the House and Senate are carefully maneuvered by the overwhelming number of crony capitalists in the membership of each house. That is why the TEA Party was such a threat and why the Never-Trumpsters were so outspoken.
Trump is on his own. He has a few foot soldiers in the House and it is they who caused the defeat of Ryan-care. They have given Trump the ability to say “I told you so” as Obamacare crashes and burns.
However, something MUST be done to tighten up the Medicaid borders, because Obama opened the program to suck in a terrific number of new entitlement holders. In a sense, Medicaid could just morph into national healthcare by continually broadening access. Just let the deficit suck it in as it bloats. The deficit is beyond comprehension now, so why should a doubling of it may any impact on a profligate citizenry? (I truly do not favor any such move.)
Big labor loves Obamacare because under that plan, they don’t have to pay for medical insurance in their retirement programs.
The Chamber of Commerce is all in for globalization. They need a continuing flood of immigrants in order to harvest crops and clean rooms and mow lawns. The manufacturers go where the production is cheap and big agribusiness gets peons.
Wall Street and the banks just chase high returns and those sources can be anywhere in the world.
Big Pharma is a total racket. So long as they can keep the sucker citizens of the US paying $$$ per pill for meds, they can sell the same meds to Canada or else where for a profit of ¢¢¢ per pill and still rake in $$$ on volume.
Big Pharma, the banks and Wall Street, labor unions, the Chamber of Commerce spent $5.8 MILLION PER LAWMAKER in 2016. ($3.1 Billion lobbying Congress.) That is a business expense, not charity.
The Swamp that Trump needs to drain is made up of (1.) merry-go-round members of the permanent bureaucracy who can hide like a locust through an opposing administration while working to undermine it. (2.) There is a politically liberal corps of Pentagon military brass who love the perks they peel off from high $$$ programs. They are more grifter and grafter than patriot. (3.) The Deep State spyers, liars and deniers who peddle in political intrigue for a variety of personal reasons. (4.) The lobbyist-legislator-regulator iron triangle must be sorted out and tamed. (5.) Deficit spending must be slashed.
Trump is highly dangerous, because he is not beholden to any particular interest other than his own sense of how the Constitution should be read.
Finally, campaign funds must be “banked” in some sort of controlling structure such as a national political campaign fund bank. The candidates should be able to withdraw up to their maximum credit during campaign seasons, but when they retire, left over monies go to pay down the deficit. Right now, they build up a few million and then retire and take it with them. That is in addition to their retirement money for having served.
Washington is a cesspool of special entitlements and privilege. Every seat of power in every country in every age has always been the same.
When a Paul Ryan marries well and grifts well as a legislator, his view of reality is that he will never have to go back to driving the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. Or polish it. He lives a Hollywood sort of existence without all the hard drugs. McConnell=ditto. Of the 535 members of Congress, how many have actually made themselves free of the seduction and kept from giving in to the temptation?
The parish priest on a bicycle serves a Bishop with a fine house who is directed by a Cardinal with vast influence and access to the highest of society and establishment. Congress is made up of Bishops and Cardinals. And monied interests always know how indulgences are granted.
No, Republicans do not want to repeal Obamacare. They want to go along to get along with how their nests are feathered and that means they don’t want to ruffle establishment feathers. In matter of fact, they are wealthy, well placed “Olivers” standing with their tin bowls asking the monied interests: “Please, sir, I want some more.”
I am so pleased that enough members of the House Freedom Caucus stood up to this sorry excuse for an Obama Care replacement to block it.
Maybe now the GOP establishment and a few moderate Dimocrits will in the future set down and come up with a realistic improved health care plan.
Or to borrow a quote from another great president I saw earlier this morning, “A government program is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Thus lies the problem of the (un)Affordable Care Act. One can’t simply repeal something people are already using without replacing what those people are using with something else. So pure ‘repeal’ efforts were an uphill battle from the beginning. Paul Ryan is taking a lot of heat now, but the progressive spin machine will be just as happy to replace him with someone else in an ad pushing granny off a cliff. (George Soros would be delighted to make the currency of another banana republic collapse in order to fund the effort.) That’s why whatever is done must be done with great care. And as Ted noted, one would think there’s enough policy wonks in the DMV to come with a few alternatives over the course of time, but apparently that’s not the case.
The last of the provisions of the ACA kick in this year. So there’s a pretty good chance that it will collapse of its own weight sooner than later. When that happens, the 20% or however many who like it and whose stories keep getting promoted will seem more like 2%. Only residents of Fantasyland like San Fran Nan will be able to defend it with a straight face.
As for the lefties who keep snickering about how Mr Art Of The Deal failed to make a deal, well, they apparently fail to understand that part of making a deal is knowing when to just walk away from one and leave it for another time. But everyone has to have a victory somehow, so if they’re smart they won’t blow the momentary PR capital they have.
Kochs pledge millions to GOPers in 2018 — if they vote no on health care bill – CNN
https://apple.news/AvJ4Kz07xRhKDGkiINU09Ag
Comment by rusty — March 22, 2017 @ 11:29 pm – March 22, 2017
Helio, you forgot the ‘healthcare industry’. Hospitals and institutional recipients of Obamacare love it, since it wipes a huge potential liability off their books. When someone gets admitted with ACA coverage, healthcare facilities are virtually guaranteed to get everything above the $6K or $10K deductible. So the patient can still worry about how they’re going to come up with any leftover amount, but the hospital will only have to collect a few grand at the most, and that’s a helluva lot better than trying to collect $50K or more. Even if people can’t afford insurance, enough can so that the bottom line for hospitals is better. Winning!
It was reported that the head of my state’s hospital association [read: head lobbyist] went to DC to meet with my state’s congressional delegation. I’m betting he actually got in to see them.
#37, Rusty. A Libertarian’s pledge of cash doesn’t invalidate someone’s vote. It shows intent by the Libertarian. [The Koch bros are addicted to attempts at remaining relevant even though the GOP has plenty of cash] Without the pledge, the Conservative caucus would have voted no on the GOPer’s obamacare lite. It was never a mystery.
One notes that, since this was never going to President Trump’s desk, it was never meant to succeed.
Demonstration complete. Obamacare mandate penalties muted previously by President Trump. Up later; repeal of Obamacare, without replacement after demonstration has shown, with the Dems’ help, replacement not possible. Repeal is the mandate to the GOP.
Sorry Libs. This will become clear in time for the truly dense among you. You lose – again.
@ #30 Matthew the Oilman:
There is a some murky connection between Gruber’s Romneycare and the Obamacare Frankinstein monster. And if you cast a wide net, the Heritage Foundation can be pulled in, as well.
Romneycare came on the scene in 2006. Which is the same year that Robert Creamer went to prison and devised a way to pump up the example of Romneycare and foist a nationwide scheme on the whole country.
@ #11 littlelettermike, the fascist states:
Gruber was born in 1965. In the 90’s he would have been between 25 and 34 years old. He likely played around in health care at that time as by 2006, Gruber received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under. In 1999 he wrote a paper which suggested that legalized abortion has a selective effect for reducing the birth of “marginal children” that saved the government over $14 billion in welfare payments through 1994.
He appears to be a modern day eugenist. But for the purposes of propaganda, what difference does it make if Gruber’s fingerprints are all over Romneycare? Romenycare was not and is not of Republican origin. As I noted @ #29. littlelettermike, the fascist can babble off topic and lie, distort, skew, equivocate, contort, posture, adulterate, corrupt, pollute and pervert the concept of any sort of an honest exchange of points of view.
Forbes especially, took up the theme that the roots of Obamacare can be traced to Republicans. Fine. For the sake argument, so what? Bob Dole, a Republican through and through is responsible for sucking the Social Security “Trust Fund” into the income receipts of the budget which has been as great a SNAFU as can be imagined. Nixon gave us the EPA. The argument concerning the dictatorial authoritarianism of the EPA or the bankruptcy of Social Security or the impossibility of Obamacare is not an issue of parentage.
Gruber, Creamer, Obama, Alinsky, Axelrod, and others came together to create Obamacare which it is NOT about the solution to medical care; it is a means to an end and the “end” is nationalized, government health care.
Richard Douglas Lamm while Governor of Colorado in 1984 supported physician-assisted suicide and famously said:
Every national healthcare system looks at reducing the costs of the most expensive components and eventually eugenics rears its head. Many gays have claimed that Reagan decided they should die of AIDS; that is a charge of eugenics used evilly.
George Bernard Shaw: ““If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”
In order to have an honest discussion about nationalized health care, we must come to an understanding about what we intend to do with “useless” life.
Recently, Tommy Vladim Alvarado-Ventura, 31, of Hempstead, NY had a bad day. He stabbed a woman who suffered a collapsed lung. He sodomized a two-year old girl and did extreme damage to her internal organs. Then he stabbed the child’s mother. Alvarado-Ventura is a member of MS-13 and was deported back to El Salvador four times between 2006 and 2011. He faces life in prison. Shall we euthanize the little girl whose medical issues are likely to be enormous $$$$? How about the collapsed lung lady? After all, it will be plenty expensive to imprison Alvarado-Venture for 60+ years. Heaven forfend, we shan’t discuss retro-active abortion for that poor immigrant soul.
I’ll put it in the message by which Col. Nathan R. Jessup explained such things in A Few Good Men”: “You can’t handle the truth! We live in a world that has (death wards), and those (death wards) have to be (manned) by men with (needles). Who’s gonna do it? You? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for (those we euthanize.) You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, while tragic, probably saved (useful) lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves (useful) lives! You don’t want the truth, because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that (death ward). You need me on that (death ward). We use words like “honor”, “code”, “loyalty”. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said “thank you”, and went on your way.
So, when it comes to this, I guess the Progressives can just say “the Republicans made us do it.”
RSG @ #38, Indeed I did leave out big medicine. An oversight, I assure you. Hospitals have no standardized payment schedule. Locally, if you are shivering in the emergency room, a nurse will ask if you would like a blanket. What is not disclosed is that blanket will cost anywhere from $50 to $150 depending on who is paying.
For-profit hospitals (most of them) have to deal in charging for “unique” services on a step by step basis for delivering the service in order to offset their loses in other areas. The blanket has to be requisitioned=1 cost step. It is delivered=1 cost step. It is itemized on the charge slip=1 cost step. It is reclaimed after use=1 cost step. It is sent to the laundry=1 cost step. It is laundered=1 cost step. It is examined for reuse=1 cost step. It is returned to inventory=1 cost step. Ditto an aspirin. Ditto a cup of water. Ditto, ditto, ditto.
(CNN) President Donald Trump noted with some exasperation Monday the complexity of the nation’s health laws, which he’s vowed to reform as part of a bid to scrap Obamacare.
“We have come up with a solution that’s really, really I think very good,” Trump said at a meeting of the nation’s governors at the White House.
“Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject,” he added. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
DJT master of the art of the deal? Not so much. I’m doubting the wall deal, trade deals and debt and deficit deals.
Here’s the video
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/feb/27/trump-healthcare-complicated-budget-video
I love the cartoon on Lucianne’s page:
Trump says: Repeal and Replace
Congress says: Reword and Regroup; Rebel and Rebuff; Reconsider and Recover; Reject and Rejoice; Reflect and Refuse; Rethink and Renege; Revise and Revisit.
I’m starting to have a (heretical) rethink on all this.
Perhaps we need to take a hard look at single-payer. Of course, this will involve truth-telling – as in top-flight care and treatment for everyone is impossible. A workable system might provide some baseline of care with extras being available for a fee (out-of-pocket and/or optional insurance).
Obviously, this will involve difficult (politically impossible) decisions like “baseline coverage doesn’t include liver transplants” and fewer Level I trauma centers. Also, baseline coverage wouldn’t include expensive cancer drugs that, at best, provide only a few months.
As it is, taxpayers are paying for most healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, Indian Health Service, subsidies, tax credits, and stuff I’ve not thought of) but these payments get sluiced through a thick layer of insurance bureaucracies, administrators, and other assorted overhead that doesn’t even provide an aspirin.
I can’t think of any workable free-market system. There is zero chance that we’ll toss the uninsured to the side of the road (sorry about your heart attack but you didn’t save enough money or buy insurance so tough-titty to you).
Some years ago, my father (cardiologist) told me that some large percentage of people employed in “healthcare” never got within a mile of a patient. I don’t remember the number but I remember it seemed nonsensical. It wasn’t.
https://fee.org/articles/the-chart-that-could-undo-the-us-healthcare-system/
Ryancare, like Obamacare does nothing to lower costs (forcing docs to accept less doesn’t lower costs; it just moves them around; ditto for “insuring” against pre-existing conditions).
In the real world, of course, single-payer won’t work because the same powers-that-be that suckle at the current system will be in the room designing the new system.
The discussion will degenerate into free birth-control pills and tampons for Sandra Fluke and we’ll be back where we are.
Our current system is a mess: out of control costs and miserable docs and nurses. Only the administrative overhead seems happy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/doctors-tell-all-and-its-bad/380785/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/14/how-being-a-doctor-became-the-most-miserable-profession.html
Is it just me or is it when gov’t and/or MBAs get hold of something, that something turns to crap?
KCRob @ #46, no matter what comes out of single-payer brainstorming, you can not make people opt into preventative medicine regimes. Addicts will still be addicts. The super rich will still have private care and private hospitals. Congress critters will not go to the doctor on duty at Walgreens.
My point is that communism always fails because of free will.
On the other hand, just like Jeff Bezos and Amazon have succeeded in closing brick and mortar stores nation wide, there is no reason why a McDonald’s health care network should fail.
But, first, you MUST cap medical malpractice torts so that the stables of $300 per hour ambulance chasers don’t cause the services to be inflated by 1,000% due to tort insurance.
Secondly, medical costs must be brought into line by open pricing. A dental “X-ray” is immediately created on the computer. In terms of technology and cost, it is no different from snapping a selfie on your cell phone, so why is it priced as a high dollar add-on?
Go down to your well run and equipped exercise center. Mine has two huge swimming pools, a large heated pool, a “hot tub” pool big enough for a party, a zillion high dollar machines, child care area, physical therapy facilities, group exercise areas, a parking garage and much more for a bit more than $100 a month. And there are three sister facilities that I can use in a town and burbs of about 100,000.
Now, imagine the same sort of place given over to teeth, bunions, eyes, ailments, arthritis, dialysis, bones, cuts and bruises, check-ups, meds, and minor bone setting and surgeries. All at up to $100 a month per adult and up to $20 per month per kid.
Then imagine regional hospitals where “major medical” problems are sorted out for “free” because you own a major medical policy for which you pay $50 a month in a true form of insurance. This service would be subject, of course to readjustment to account for actuarial realities.
Enter the government which can offer some portion of subsidy for those needing financial help.
The point is to let competition set the price, the quality, the satisfaction, the value and the availability.
Many people live a couple of hours from the nearest drug store. Nothing we can do will change the circumstances of their life choices, but regional services would pop up where the demand is strong enough to supply the needs.
It is not a perfect plan, but nothing is. The point is that medical care must be reduced to competitive costs before any of our problems can be ironed out. More and more government tinkering around the edges won’t make any positive difference.
If you read Obamacare, it is a miserable failure from beginning to end. It is a money pass through scheme in which a thousand greedy fingers get a piece of the money before you get a band-aid.
There will still be the government health warehouses in which the indigent get screened through Medicaid type triaging and sent on the government dime to various medical shops on a per visit basis.
Emergency rooms, of course would have to be blended in somehow.
Some people would pay a greater monthly fee for the amenities, but that is the invisible hand at work. I believe that if the physical fitness place I use could weave in flu shots, physicals, general medicine, cuts and bruises, etc. they would do it in a heartbeat.
Random tokens…
DMV, USPS, EDD…
*Gagging*
Politicians want to provide cheaper health care to win favor but don’t want to raise taxes. Make it illegal to raise the debt ceiling and illegal to print endless supplies of fiat money. Make politicians pay down the federal debt by 5% every year. Taxes have to be raised to pay for all the pork the people demand. When people are forced to pay 90% tax rate for all the goodies they want from Santa Sam maybe then they’ll rethink socialized medicine.
The worm just keeps turning.
We were all suckered into this doublespeak about how the Senate Parliamentarian could rule the “reconciliation” aspect of the bill into a 60 vote battle.
When you look at the impossible path that Obamacare took in becoming law, how is it that such shenanigans are not available to Republicans?
Gohmert was elected three times as a state district judge for Texas’s 7th Judicial District, serving Smith County (Tyler, Texas) from 1992 to 2002.
He also challenged he also John Boehner for the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives in January of 2015. Boehner won.
Doesn’t ‘GOP’ stand for “gutless old patsies”?
What the heck happened to the comments?
I can’t see most of them, either.
Something else changed, the GP comments used to open in their own window, with HTML hints. Now they open in the original window…and the text is all in “bold”.
Before you click on this thread, it says there are supposed to be 55 comments. But, when you click on it, there are only five. Well, with mine (if it appears), that’ll make six.
@ccp – I posted a brilliant comment regarding a rethink on single-payer.
I’m sure that’s what broke the comments. /sarc
lol!
It was brilliant…I’m searching through my RSS reader to see if it captured it. [fingers crossed]
The text bolding (both on the posts pages and the home page) has been going on for several weeks. It seems to come and go. The comments thingy where comments don’t open up into their own pop-up but rather as part of the individual posts page as well as the posts which have truncated comments (so far two posts from my count), that’s more recent (like 10 days or so).
AHCA was The Establishment’s Bismarck. It had to go down, no matter what.