“A Republican lawmaker on Tuesday walked back his remarks earlier in the day that low-income Americans may have to prioritize purchasing health care coverage over gadgets such as iPhones under Republicans’ Obamacare replacement plan,” Eugene Scott reports for CNN. “The controversy began when House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on ‘New Day’ that he wants low-income Americans to be able to have more access to health coverage.”
“‘But access for lower income Americans doesn’t equal coverage,’ Camerota said. ‘Well, we’re getting rid of the individual mandate. We’re getting rid of those things that people said that they don’t want,’ Chaffetz replied. “Americans have choices, and they’ve got to make a choice. So rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care,'” Scott reports. “‘They’ve got to make those decisions themselves,’ Chaffetz added.”
“‘We have to be able to lower the cost of health care,’ he said. ‘We do think that with more choices, that you will get a better product at a lower price and that will be good for everybody on the entire spectrum of income,'” Scott reports. “Later Tuesday morning, Chaffetz walked back his remarks, though he stood by his argument that Americans would need to better prioritize health care spending under the new plan. ‘What we’re trying to say — and maybe I didn’t say it as smoothly as I possibly could — but people need to make a conscious choice and I believe in self-reliance,’ he said on Fox News’ ‘America’s Newsroom.” “And they’re going to have to make those decisions.'”
“House Republicans introduced a bill Monday that would scrap Obamacare’s individual mandate, a major pillar of the law, replacing it with refundable tax credits for individuals to purchase health insurance,” Scott reports. “It would also restructure Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds familiar:
I guess what I would say is, if you looked at that person’s budget and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, uh, their cellphone bill, uh, [and] other things that they’re spending on, it may turn out that it’s just they haven’t prioritized healthcare because everybody’s healthy. — President Obama, March 6, 2014
“President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed a plan by Republican lawmakers to replace the Obamacare healthcare statute,” Susan Heavey reports for Reuters. “Trump said the draft bill was open to negotiation, adding that he was working on a system to cut drug prices.”
“In a series of Twitter posts, Trump called the draft ‘our wonderful new Healthcare Bill’ and said that it was ‘now out for review and negotiation,'” Heavey reports. “Trump, who has previously called for lower drug prices, added, ‘I am working on a new system where there will be competition in the Drug Industry. Pricing for the American people will come way down!’ The president also said there would be additional action to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines ‘in phase 2 & 3 of healthcare rollout.’ Insurers have said that Obamacare does not work. Many including UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc have exited most of the states where they sold individual insurance plans created under the law.”
“The Heritage Action advocacy group, influential among conservatives, said the new bill was only a half measure. ‘Rather than accept the flawed premises of Obamacare, congressional Republicans should fully repeal the failed law and begin a genuine effort to deliver on longstanding campaign promises that create a free-market healthcare system that empowers patients and doctors,’ the group said,” Heavey reports. “The proposal preserved two popular Obamacare provisions: prohibiting insurers from refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions and allowing people up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance plans. The plan does not eliminate the healthcare exchange where people can buy coverage on the healthcare.gov website. Instead of current income-based subsidies to buy a plan, Republicans proposed tax credits, which would range from $2,000 to $4,000. Their plan also seeks to encourage people to buy insurance with the age-based credits that are capped at upper-income levels.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: BTW, we’re self-employed here at MacDailyNews and, for a single very typical example, one person here at MDN spent $1806.51 per month in 2015 and $1902.98 per month in 2016 for family health insurance (medical, dental, vision) or $44,513.88 over the last 24 months which is nearly forty-six (46) top-of-the-line iPhone 7 Plus (256GB) units. And, that’s not counting an annual $5,000 deductible, so add on ten (10) more 256GB iPhone 7 Plus units, or 56 top-of-the-line iPhones in the past two years alone.
Obviously the health insurance system in the United States of America is FUBAR and an unspeakably massive drag on the economy overall.
The basic problem is that the prices of healthcare are not defined. They are elastic. What else do you buy without seeing the price upfront? Without knowing the hourly rate upfront? Or the cost of typical procedures? You go to a garage and it says on a board the labor cost per hour. It shows the cost of an oil change, brake services, a tune-up, etc. You go into Target and the price is on the product. You can compare that price with Amazon’s and Walfart’s and then decide where to buy. Not so with medical services, tests, and procedures.
Ever wonder why a new doctor asks what your insurance plan is upfront? It’s not just to determine that you have insurance, it also determines how much you’ll pay. The prices change based on the insurance company/plan. Ever wonder why, when you have “good insurance,” the doctor’s office seems excited to hear it? Or how well you’re treated over others with lesser (read: less profitable) insurance companies/plans? They want to keep you happy. You’re a high-value patient. If you’ve ever gone from crappy insurance to good insurance or vice versa, you know what we mean.
Until the medical costs are displayed upfront and everybody is charged that rate, regardless of their plan, this mess will continue. You can’t have real competition that drives down costs until the actual costs are clearly known by all parties and uniform per person regardless of their insurance or even lack thereof.
Tim wishes. The GOP’s new replacement for Obamacare is to severely cut subsidies to the poor and middle class. This new found money will then be channeled to the wealthy and corporations as tax cuts.
You are such a pathetic cliché of your ilk. Learn a new song.
Facts are facts. And that is the GOP plan to replace Obamacare. They’re also going to place Medicaid on the voucher system.
You would do well to take your own advice.
Chaffests is just Baucus II.
Under the new plan if I like my current iPhone can I keep it?
No Mandate, and no requirement for large Co’s to provide health insurance. So what we end up with is lots of people with no health insurance until they get sick or injured – and then they’ll find out why they should have had it all along. And spineless Chaffetz blurts out the truth and has to walk it back.
“I guess what I would say is, if you looked at that person’s budget and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, uh, their cellphone bill, uh, [and] other things that they’re spending on, it may turn out that it’s just they haven’t prioritized healthcare because everybody’s healthy.”
In Obama’s comment, he is not condemning people, let alone condemning the poor as this GOP Dick clearly is. Many people have replaced their $45 land line with a $45 cell plan. Poor people don’t by iPhone in numbers has MDN has run stories on saying mainly the affluent use iPhones.
It’s the exact same comment you delusional twit.
Tough guy. Your imitation of Botty is a failure. Try a different strategy.
If you think those costs are high, wait until you see the new plan.
It ain’t going to be cheaper.
I’m glad I’m in California. My health insurance is no cost through work. Under our company plan, a family of four only pays 230 a month.
1800 a month for insurance? You need a new negotiator.
What type of coverage do you receive for this $230 a month?
You get a really good plan because the employer is paying 80% of the premiums. You people who don’t have to deal with individual policies have no idea how easy you have it.
Agreed. Larger companies might subsidize up to 75% or 80% of the cost of health insurance premiums (generally subject to a total cost cap if you choose one of the more expensive options) as part of the employees benefit package. But fewer and fewer companies offer such benefits because the cost grew much faster than inflation.
The next best thing is to have access to a group rate negotiated by a company or some other organization. Going it alone is impractical for most people…it just costs too much because you have zero negotiating power. As MDN stated, health care costs vary widely and the individually insured or uninsured pay the most (assuming that they can pay).
The new health care law will fail without universal coverage or some type of individual mandate/penalty because the cost has to be spread across the entire population to bring down the costs for the very ill. The tax credits and other measures will leave many of the poor without insurance, once again. The GOP is also weaseling out on the medicare expansion issue – you notice how they are positioning the “freeze” date in 2020? That is just another example of kick the can down the road and hope that someone else has to deal with it.
Virtually no elected official in Washington D.C. is willing to make the difficult decisions required to keep this country solvent. the GOP claims the conservative high road with respect to financial issues, but it ends up being even worse than “tax and spend” – with the GOP it is “tax cut and spend” with increasing annual deficits. The difference between the two major political parties is primary just a matter of where the money ends up. With the Democrats, there is more spending on social programs and more money ends up with the poor and middle class, in general. With the Republicans, there is more spending on defense and security (and walls) and more money ends up with corporations and the wealthy.
Even some of the other differentiating issues, such as environmental protection, clean air and water, national parks and public lands, is largely driven by financial considerations. Companies can increase profits by polluting and by exploiting/developing public resources. Most of politics ultimately comes down to money.
“You get a really good plan because the employer is paying 80% of the premiums.”
No the employer is not paying it. His customers are in the price of whatever they buy from your company.
And: the money that makes up that 80% could have been paid to you in wages.
How much is the employer paying?
I guess the answer to that isn’t my concern. We are also not a large company. About 40 people thereabouts.
It’s a good plan, not as good as in the past pre ACA but still any increases were not unexpected. By the way, when I was working for the same company part time, before I was eligible for insurance, ACA insurance cost me $1 a month in CA.
You’re missing something somewhere. What’s your deductible? What percentage is your employer contributing? Are you sure there’s not more being taken out of your check than $230/mo.?
“You need a new negotiator.” They’re self-employed. They don’t have a “negotiator.” There is no human resources department to do everything for you.
Somebody negotiated with the insurance company just as someone negotiated here. Somebody is handling HR there. Deductibles vary but a 2 day stay in the hospital for a heart arrhythmia and shocking my heart from the inside down the throat cost me 1200 dollars.
Are you under the impression that people who are self-employed or employed without health insurance have “somebody handling HR” for them? No they don’t. We just shop around and try to find the best deal on the local market. There is no negotiating involved.
In many U.S counties, there isn’t even any competition because only one insurer offers individual policies. You take what they offer or you do without. You go to their doctor, pre-clear your treatment with their out-of-state staff, and use their pharmacy or you pay for everything out of pocket at the retail price.
There are very few individual policies available in most of America that would not expect you to pay at least $6000 in deductibles and copays for the hospital stay you describe. Annual premiums could be double that for just basic coverage.
The only people I ever heard of who are paying $1 for individual health coverage are extremely poor people on Medicaid. Maybe California is different; it does have higher taxes than most other states. Anywhere else, even with part-time employment and an ACA subsidy, an individual policy would cost hundreds of times more than that.
Like I said…. I’m glad I live in California.
I get full coverage at no cost per year and my taxes federal and provincial combined are less than an equivalent person in California. Oh yeah my doctor wanted me to get a MRI and I did have to wait a day for an appointment. It was nothing critical or would have been done at the hospital right away. BTW I am from Canada and for those that hate the government 99% of all health care is provided by private companies or non profit organizations and the government only sets prices and coverage requirements. For example all doctors offices are private. Oh and ALL people in Canada enjoy healthcare as a right.
The Canadian Healthcare system is not flawless but works very well on balance. The American healthcare system works well if you are wealthy and not so much of you are working class, working poor or self-employed.
Most of the Americans I hear spouting off about Universal Coverage do not have a Passport and have never set a foot out of the United States. The costs of the Canadian model are well known and many companies operate in both the United States and Canada- the average cost of healthcare to a company in Canada is far less, being funded through taxation instead of the private market.
The only thing the Canadian Model does not cover is when you travel outside the country- which is also true for Medicare and most private Insurance in the US. There is some reciprocity between nations with national healthcare, but the US is shut out because of our current scheme.
Your portion is $230 and your employer is probably paying around $1,500 or more. If that cost didn’t need to be that high you would be making a larger salary per year. Just because you aren’t writing the check doesn’t mean you aren’t still paying for it.
I wish someone in DC would get a clue that there is a difference between receiving quality healthcare and having insurance coverage. This new plan is another handout to the insurance racket, and does nothing to reduce costs or increase quality or availability of actual healthcare.
Not one drip of slime has bee drained from the swamp.
What are the trumpsters going to say when their premiums jump again next year?
Good post and good questions. My guess is that they will first attempt to blame Obama/Democrats. That will almost always be sufficient for their core supporters. They will also attempt to deflect attention to other issues – a series of inane tweets, for instance – hoping that it will all blow over. That is the Trump “squirrel” defense and it works very well on dogs, if you have even watched “Up!” After that? Blame regulations, the world economy, immigrants, refugees, people who look or worship differently…you name it.
You’re an idiot, Mel.
ACA sucks. No one in healthcare likes it.
No one that needs healthcare likes it.
What good is insurance if it does no good??
Chaffetz was right and should have stuck by his guns.
Maybe the new plan will be all about the OB-GYN since we are now nothing but a nation of pussies
Wow. That post really furthered the discussion. Are all right wingers so proud to be such assholes?
@TowerTone: “ACA sucks. No one in healthcare likes it.” No, that’s just fake news.
No-one is saying it’s perfect. But try reading the letter from the AMA today. It concludes the ACA is far better than the AHCA for numerous reasons: the ACHA cuts Medicaid (“Medicaid expansion has proven highly successful in providing coverage for lower income individuals,”); it will harm vulnerable patients (“we cannot support the AHCA as drafted because of the expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations,”); and it’s wasteful of tax dollars (“We believe credits inversely related to income, rather than age as proposed in the committee’s legislation, not only result in greater numbers of people insured but are a more efficient use of tax-payer resources,”).
The AMA joins the AHA in its condemnation of the proposed bill. One of the reasons for this is that the Democrats worked for a year with the AMA and other health care organizations to craft the ACA. The republicans ignored all the medical organizations in coming up with the AHCA, so shouldn’t be surprised they think the ACA is good compared with it.
Bullshit, of course.
I have yet to meet one, ONE!!! medical professional that likes any aspects of ACA, from receptionist through specialist to insurance people.
Google some more useless crap while the rest of us live in the REAL world.
Here’s some advice back go Chafe Itch. You might, as a gesture of solidarity, forego your entitlements of free super-duper health insurance and that bullet proof pension plan you get after one two year term – ya know, just to show you’re in it with the rest of us.
As I recall they initially did that with the unaffordable care act, but immediately after passing it exempted themselves.
Obamacare is a failure because the corporation that runs is skims 30% right off of the top to pay its suits and death panels.
Clearly and obviously to all thinking Americans, Single Payer is the ideal replacement; It’s merely Medicare for all. Simple and a moderate solution.
Single payer is a valid option. Leave off the death panels and other crap and speak with reason. The overhead costs associated with our existing healthcare system are high.
Obviously “death panels” is a very loaded term, but when you have a limited resource such as health care, and essentially zero cost to those who demand it (as you would with a single payer system), there will (either immediately or eventually) have to be a mechanism to determine how those limited resources are allocated to those demanding them.
Some of these allocation decisions will result in negative health consequences for those subject to them; some of these people will have a shorter lifespan because of it.
Thus, the term “death panel.” It’s not set up to decide who to kill, but in such a situation it MUST do its best to allocate limited resources versus (essentially) unlimited demand. And that means that someone will suffer.
The insurance corporation and GOP Sen. Max Baucus embedded the so-called “Death Panels” within Obamacare to insure maximum profits in the insurance industry.
With Single Payer where the poor get health care they can’t otherwise afford, which would be similar to Medicate have no “death panels.” because the gov. is not out to maximise the bottom line as if it’s a gadget maker; People are not to be treated as disposable gadgets. Single Payer is just and fair. The wealthy can already afford top notch health care, and out of pocket too.
Taxes from the wealthy should subsidize health care for the poor because they already took the wealth from them, so this is a way for them to make up for it. If the wealthy refuse to do this, then they can move to Somalia where there is no big gub’mnt to regulate fairness and justice in society.
You know the whole “death panels” thing was the lie of the year in 2009, don’t you? It was a Palin invention. Otherwise, your post makes sense.
Nobody from the extreme right wing or the insurance / HMO lobbies has explained why it is unacceptable for there to be a national nonprofit single-payer OPTION for citizens to have basic health care.
As much as they claim they want people to have options, the consolidated healthcare industry has already ensured that rural areas have no independent full-service hospitals. Increasingly you have no choice but to go to a large city to a Kaiser hospital for any significant procedures. And for insurance coverage, you have only one choice in many regions: what your employer offers. Small companies and individuals are raped for insurance costs because there is no real competition in the consolidated industry, all dominated by profit maximizing entities. Meanwhile — where does the end consumer go to find the best value, the best healthcare outcomes, or the best doctor for them? You can’t have that information. You must first go to a primary doctor within your HMO plan and you will like it.
No wonder US healthcare is a mess. There is no incentive to reduce costs when federal policy is being steamrolled by the usual lobbyists.
The individual mandate, which pays for enlarging the insurance risk pool so everyone on average can pay less, has been poorly implemented. Rather than a carrot, to simpletons it looks like a stick. So they rebel against it, not understanding how the system needs to work.
The reason the extreme right wing is against a nonprofit national healthcare option is obvious: corporate right wing radio feeds them ridiculous mischaracterizations like “death panels” as if anyone in government had the ability to refuse care to anyone. The corporations that have taken over the medical industry have brainwashed people into believing that competition in the form of a nonprofit government plan is inherently evil because their profits might decline.
Imagine that: those self-proclaimed super efficient corporations that enjoy regional healthcare monopolies already are deathly (pun intended) scared of what they usually claim is a bloated inefficient and incompetent government bureaucracy because they know that a nonprofit insurance plan would undercut the obscene profits these corporations are taking now.
Oh yes, and “death panels” more accurately describes denial of insurance claims from for-profit industry players than anything else. Does your HMO cover that? It’s not big bad evil government restricting health access. It’s profit seeking employers, HMOs, insurance companies all deciding what patient is most profitable.
Man you people sure live in fear. data panels? I live in Canada and we have a single payer system. My father had a stroke, was in hospital for 4 weeks, then moved to a rehab hospital for 4 months. Cost $0. He then had to goto a nursing home as he was 91 and could not be cared for at home. Cost cannot exceed more than 40% of his government pension. When time was running out free counselling was provided to the family to prepare for his death. I guess that is a death panel eh!
The only death panels currently existing are the Private Insurance Actuarials that determine what will be covered and not by your private sector insurance.
Those cans at the local 7-11 or Circle K checkout counter raising money for someone in need are usually for people with insurance who need treatment insurance will not pay for. There is your private sector health panel.
TL;DR — but when the government mandates that you MUST own health insurance, then yeah, your are stuck figuring out how to fit it in your budget. Chaffetz didn’t to “walk back” his remark. He just shouldn’t have focused on the iPhone as an example. But replace iPhone with TV, X-box, new car stereo, etc. Something has to give. Also, too many people are conflating “Health Cost” with “Insurance Cost”. The focus is too much on the cost of Insurance, but the underlying factor is the cost of medical care. MDN is correct that it is stupidly unpredictable, and often excessive overkill because of fear of malpractice litigation. These all need to be addressed. Insurance costs will fall into place only when medical costs are stabilized.
“Insurance Cost” is driven by “Health cost +profit” as opposed to single payer like Medicare, which removes the profit factor. What’s needed is single-payer healthcare with the ability of the system to bargain for drug and proceedure prices. Malpractice suits are a red herring of bullshit brought up to confuse the issue. Suits have diminished over the years, and most of the worst suits were brought against Dr’s that should never have been practicing but for the AMA refusing to police it’s own and strip Dr’s who were fuckups.
“which removes the profit factor.”
So go ahead and tell me that having a government bureaucracy to administer something like a single payer plan could possibly be any cheaper?
No Way!
I beg to differ. The government is excellent at operating monopolistic endeavors.
The government already runs a single payer system — the Veterans Administration hospital system. Just because a lot of the patients are ignored and left to die doesn’t mean it isn’t good health care.
Also, the government runs the Post Office which barely loses money.
Oh, also we have the Department of Education that lowers the student test scores with every dollar they spend.
So, please don’t tell me the government is incapable of running a large bureaucracy.
I thought the US was all about economics, supply and demand etc. Single Payer system: Private and non-profits do all the work. The Government sets and enforces standards and fees. No profits to insurance companies just care for the people. For this to work all people need to be covered and all people need to pay. The cost in the US would be far lower than here in Canada just based on the economy of scale. For some reason in the US you have been brain washed that the Government is bad! You, the people are the Government. Remember “We the People…” You have let your representatives tell you how things are going to be instead of you telling them what you want and expect from them and holding them accountable for not doing it. You have a huge political structural issue that needs to be cleaned up before anything is going to be accomplished that really helps the average American instead of the Rich. As a nation you have to decide what you really want for all that live in your society. Do you want to live by the words “We the People…” which are great or “I the person…” which is not so great? From the average Americans I have met I truly believe you want what is best for all Americans not just yourself. It is the people and the society they have built that make a great country, not some yahoo politician!
You might consider Medicaid and Medicare as government-run single-payer health care, though. By all budget estimates, they’re run with a 2%-3% overhead cost, far below that of private insurance companies (which are in the 19%-28% range).
…Typical ‘I thought I saw a poor person today out on the street, Stephanie Dahling’ ReTardlican lack of insight or empathy. Just call them willfully obtuse.
And no kiddies, I don’t prefer ‘libtards’ either. I prefer making sense. Neither worthless US political party qualifies.
If we follow the Canadian or U.K. System, everyone will have coverage.
You can vote me down, but no one is dyeing because of it. QOL is still very good in countries with universal healthcare. There is nothing you can say other than lies to refute that.
Obama…. Kenya… Michelle… birth certificate… socialist… community organizer…. you mean they don’t work?
No and that’s pure BS.
But sadly, having relatives in both Canada and the UK, I know that everyone there is covered but that the coverage is slow to the point of dangerous/deadly and the quality is wanting. I’ve had relatives come here to the USA for superior medical care, having to pay out-of-pocket for it.
Meanwhile, the Democrats made and incredible mess of the Affordable Care Act, with stupid Nancy Pelosi advising her House colleagues to NOT EVEN READ IT before they voted on it. Idiot.
Now we have Psycho Paul Ryan’s own mess on the table for a SECOND time, making the Democrat’s mess look like a beautifully made soufflé. I call it PsychopathiCare. The effect on the poor is, as expected, dangerous/deadly. What does that remind me of?
Summary: A mess all ways round.
Canada and UK are single payer systems. A government controlled monopsony which controls the cost of medical care placed on the patient. In these systems patients are 75% satisfied care vs 45% in our pre ACA system. California is in a unique place to achieve single payer stats and roofing medical costs, under the current system, which the GOP want to gut. California will go it alone if it gets repealed. Current ACA cannot be repealed without risk of the GOP losing both the House and Senate. Mark my words they are playing with fire. This is basic economics.
Where patience are wanting of something more in Canada or UK, such as faster care response time, they can pay for additional coverage. No one is holding them back.
Instead of antidotal stories of Canadian or UK patiences coming to America for better care, we need to have independent investigative reporting on the reasons behind that, weather the costs for extra benefits is too high or there are specialties in the US that other nations don’t have. I know that in California we have cutting edge eye care and other specialists, in UCMC and Stanford MC. This serves the common good.
I’m not telling anecdotes (or antidotes). My cousin in Canada was told to wait three months to see a specialist oncologist (cancer MD). Beat that as a nightmare scenario. I rest my case.
Would you agree that the situation might be an outlier and not the norm? From what I have understood, population densities can impact healthcare and the types of care availability in addition to premium cost, at least in the US. If you live in NorCal, you will have different issues. If you live in LA, your options open up.
It’s an ‘outlier’ to get cancer. Is that what you mean? Probably not.
So no. There are far too many of the same story to call this any ‘outlier’. There are benefits of single payer health systems and there are deficits. I pointed out a deficit that can translated into death. Cancer obviously is something that is treated IMMEDIATELY if any health system wishes their patients to survive. How can you argue that point?
Rural vs urban is an entirely different issue, applicable to any health system, of no relevance to this discussion.
No not the cancer. Sorry to hear. But the treatment/delay.
I won’t argue the cancer point specifically. But I also can’t make that the reason to not have single payer. I haven’t seen or heard of reports of anyone dyeing, which would be a valid report to have. My biggest concern is that we have been taking about universal health care for close to 100 years. It always seems the medical industrial complex lobbies against it and I think that’s a really bad bias to base a public health system on, especially when profits are concerned. It is well known, especially these days, that price gouging is a real thing, even for medicine that have already recouped their costs to develop. Only doctors take the hypocritical oath, not companies and CEOs. They don’t care if you live or die. They want you to pay up. Health should be a human right, not a choice or just a choice. You shouldn’t have to choose between an iPhone or a knee replacement. Just saying.
My Dad was an MD. So I got to hear his point of view about it all as single payer systems were considered during my lifetime. His final conclusion is that in this day and age in the USA, a single payer system was the only solution that was actually going to work to fit the goal of real universal citizen health coverage.
As is blatantly obvious, despite the usual deceitful rhetoric from Psycho Paul Ryan (whom I had the displeasure of watching on C-Span today) and the rest of the ReTARDlicans (seeing as some dolt called me a ‘libtard’ yesterday here on Republican Propaganda Daily News), Ryan Care 2.0 rips healthcare out from under ALL the poor. The nexus of laughter is the ‘tax credit’ that is entirely meaningless to ANYONE who is defined as actually ‘poor’ in the USA. PsychopathiCare.
Blethering on in my usual anti-libtard manner: The core problem with any socialist system, such as the one-payer system is the lack of competition, that lack of incentive. If an MD is going to make Medicaid level pay for their Medical-Mill exhausting work, outrageous malpractice insurance costs and outrageous education costs, the OBVIOUSLY that MD is NOT going to give a crap about providing top notch quality support for their patients. That’s the reason one-payer systems FAIL. It’s exactly the problem with socialist governments, the worst of which of course are the ‘communist’ systems that are so ridiculous that they immediately implode and rot into totalitarianism. We’ve already GOT impending totalitarianism in the USA. Feeding it further is a seriously bad idea.
So what’s the solution? All I know is that everyone in the medical profession requires and incentive to provide top notch work. Build that into a one-payer system and we’re back on level ground again. I’d love to see ideas about how to do it. Ryan Care 2.0 is merely more of Kill The Poor; Feed The Rich. To hell with that Ne0-Feudalist crap.
The Canadian and British healthcare systems are quite different. The Canadian System is Provincial (State) provided Health Insurance. The UK System (NHS) is owned and operated by the national government.
For all the bitching, the health of the average Canadian is better than the average American and their outcomes tend to be better. In America you might get it fast, but that is no assurance it was done right.
I’d agree with you except for your last sentence. IF a US citizen can AFFORD their required healthcare, there IS assurance that it will be done right.
Related:
The core problem that created the need for the US Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) was years of hospital bankruptcies due specifically to their having to treat people coming to their Emergency Rooms who had no insurance or any way to pay for treatment. Hospitals are required by law to treat all incoming patients.
It had become crazy to the point where hospitals would pay to have ill patients shipped out of their jurisdiction and DUMPED just so the hospital didn’t have to eat the cost of their treatment. Leave them on someone else’s doorstep. That’s obviously a sick way to treat the sick.
Will Ryan Care 2.0 help to solve the hospital emergency room crisis? Hell no. It will bring BACK the problem. That’s how smart Ryan is and how little the sociopath cares about human beings.
The problem has been ongoing. Funds previously used to compensate Hospitals for uninsured was used in part to fund the Medicaid expansion. States that opted out saw Hospitals and clinics close of cut back under severe financial hardship.
Under the Trump/Ryan scheme, that money will go away with nothing to replace it. Health insurance will have been replaced by access to insurance- and a tax cut for fat cats.
Trump punked low information voters. They will be feeling the pain soon enough.
No, you have this entirely wrong. Medicaid expansion was created specifically to take the burden of uninsured, indigent patients off the emergency rooms of hospitals. THAT is the cause and effect here.
There is no ‘Trump’ healthcare plan. This is 100% Paul Ryan version 2.0. Same old shite he attempted to perpetrate in 2009 with minor modifications. You can still read Ryan’s 2009 plan at his .gov website if you care to.
That said, you’re correct IMHO: ‘They will be feeling the pain soon enough’. Watching and listening to C-Span every day I can verify that there are troves of clueless people who hate ‘Obamacare’ and will be BURNED by Ryan Care and regret it. You can’t stop stupid.
Only a Marxist truth is allowed in a Marxist society.
Liberty is dead, get over it – your one world government owns you now!
Except there version would cost a lot more. Guess who would get the lower cost? The richest 1%. The rest of us get to pay a lot more even if we are covered under a corporate plan. Guess who else gets benefits. The insurance company CEO’s get a big fat check. This new version is TOTAL GARBAGE!!!!!
We need single payer Medicare for all. It makes sense for the self employed, for small businesses, for large corporations, for providers of healthcare and most of all for patients.
The single most common cause of Bankruptcy in the United States is illness or injury that results in massive medical expense. These are not welfare cheats, these are usually hard working Americans who simply ended up in an unfortunate situation. Since so many Americans get health insurance from an employer, the loss of a job means the loss of insurance coverage.
The lack of universal coverage also causes all the crazy cost shifting, fuzzy accounting and unequal pricing that drives people crazy. The lack of a universal coverage plan also greatly complicates the billing and accounting costs to providers, adds greatly to overhead and results in higher prices. Each insurer has different paperwork, different plans, different pre-approval requirements, different compliance rules and all the rest. This makes for a huge overhead that costs real Dollars not spent on getting you well and keeping you well, but handling arcane, Byzantine and obtuse insurance payment schemes.
Universal Coverage is not socialized medicine. Socialized Medicine is when the government owns the hospitals, clinics and employs Providers such as Doctors, Advanced Practice Nurses and Physician Assistants. Members of the US Military receive Socialized Medicine, as the Defense Department operates the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States via the US Army, Navy and Air Force Medical activities.
Universal coverage will encourage people to be entrepreneurs by liberating them from the cost of healthcare or fear of going without coverage. It will improve public health by allowing for better preventative care and timely interventions which, over time, reduce the costs of healthcare to society. A healthier population is also a more productive population that improves the bottom line for business.
Decoupling health insurance from employment and making it a universal service provided by government and funded through taxes is smart and works well in countless nations in the developed world. Businesses no longer have to deal with the complex projection of healthcare costs in order to manage their workforce, make expansion or hiring decisions or project future business expenses.
I work as licensed Professional in Healthcare and have done so for over 30 years. During that time I have worked for Government, Private and Public Hospitals- to include Military Healthcare. I have worked in various parts of our country and have also lived overseas and seen the quality of healthcare provided under various national healthcare systems. We can do this, we can afford this, it will benefit all of us and most importantly it will save money over the long term.
The ACA is an awful kludge, but the Republican proposal is no better. We can expand the already efficient Medicare System to all Americans without creating a new bureaucracy. Medicare is highly cost efficient and can cover all Americans without significant additional overhead costs.
Liberals want everyone covered, Conservatives want cost-efficient healthcare and Libertarians want less burdensome government. Expanding Medicare to all can cover everyone, do it efficiently and get private employers out of the costly (in time, money and compliance costs) healthcare business. This is a win all around and is doable.
Money..get back….getta good job with good pay and your OOOOOK.
Well put, MDN. Rush was saying just that the other day about the prices being elastic (your term, not his). The providers throw spaghetti at the all and sees how much will stick and that is what they get paid. It is a messed up system, that has fraud and abuse built in as part of its business model.