Republican Sabotage of ObamaCare

[KeithE]

1. In 2015
There was a provision in the ACA called "risk-corridors" where heath insurers were given funds if at the end of the year, there were too many sick people and they ended up with a negative cash flow over all of their state markets. That happened in 2013, 2014, 2015 while maintaining Obama’s annual reduction in the annual deficit (see ** below)

But Marco Rubio’s 2015 bill curtailed that for 2016 to 13% of what it was in 2015. He claimed it was a “bailout” for the health insurers, and it was, but that enabled many people to be covered. After that bill, the insurers dropped out of many counties markets in 2016. Particularly hard hit were the smaller plans in smaller counties; thus the reduction to having only "1/3 of the counties having more than 1 plan” - a Republican talking point. It killed competition, but the Republicans had another talking point about ObamaCare being in a “death spiral” with no competition. Now some insurers stay in those now marginally profitable counties but only by increasing premiums (one in Arizona went up 122%) and/or deductibles. Thus the Republicans had another talking point - "premiums are skyrocketing”.

Truth is all three talking points (in quotes above) were caused by the Rubio Bill.

2. Since Trump’s inauguration, he (or perhaps Price) directed that HHS take down ObamaCare registration online. That ought to be illegal while a law is in effect; but they did it. Read

Trump also gave an Executive Order within 5 days of taking office negating the teeth of the mandates. Read . That did not change the execution of ObamaCare but it dis say to the young & healthy do not get insurance, you will probably not have any penalty (money needed to make ObamaCare healthy).

------------------

So we have Republicans sabotaging ObamaCare. Truth is the GOP plan without mandates to the young (who think they will not get sick) will both increase the ratio of sick older people in the plans (and thus increasing premiums and making less people able to pay) as well as upping the number of people showing up in ER (thus increasing costs even to those who have group plans). I suspect the GOP Plan will result in the "death spiral” (but I’ll admit that the CBO has said that both plans would be “stable”)

So much to more to say about this - e.g. listen to : .

But the real best approach is a single payer plan like every other OECD country who do heat care for half the cost with better outcomes (as I've said many times before). Don’t tell me it can’t work.

------------------
** The peak annual deficit was in 2009. It was a Bush budget with the big increase from 2008 being caused by the deregulation-caused recession. Such deregulation fever could easily take us down again. But that is another subject and it is dinnertime.

[Jim]

The Obama/Gruber cabal sabotaged Obamacare from the beginning. It was built on subterfuge and despicable deceit. The employer mandate has never been enforced though it was due in 2014 but would have killed Obamacare long before now if Obama had honored his oath. The budget will remain in deficit perhaps forever, no matter which party is in power. Obama believed in printing money, the answer to all debts. As the Rev. Dr. (God **** America) Wright would have it, the chickens have long since come home to roost. This is called “kicking the can down the road.” A reasonable answer might be to have all citizens pay into a program like Medicare (automatic credits toward health problems) that can be exploited at any time of need, with the suggestion that ancillary insurance be bought in addition. I am blessed with Medicare, for which I paid while working but as a blue-collar pensioner realize that about 25% to 30% of my income is still paid out for insurance, mostly medical. The new healthcare act will please few, if any, but it at least will be read before a vote is taken, something that did not happen in 2010 by midnight on Christmas Eve.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

Well, let's see. It allowed 30 million more Americans to access a health care system that has increasingly become the domain of those more interested in profits than patients, and a philosophy that has shifted health care from a basic human right connected directly to the sanctity of human life to a commodity to be valued to see how much money people are willing to pay to relieve their pain and preserve their quality of life. It kept the cost of insurance premiums from outpacing inflation by more than 10% annually, and gee, even if you're only interested in the bottom line, every insurer that has participated in Obama care has made record profits over the past seven years.

The problems that have developed are the same ones that would develop in any government attempt to regulate health care finance reform, there are too many nuances and interests that distract from creating a program that simply states objectives and puts regulations in place to achieve the objectives. Initially, the intentions were good, and were centered around the interests of the individual American and his or her health care needs, while the interests of insurers, and corporations that now own most health care facilities, which are profits, not patients, were secondary to that. Conservatives and Republicans can do all the lip flapping they want to about being champions of the sanctity of human life, as long as most of them in Congress can easily be bought and paid for by bribes from insurance providers and health care corporations, they aren't champions of anything but greed. Come up with a system that puts patient care first, and I'll believe it when I see it. What the Republicans have created at the present time is the most draconian, evil, despicable, corrupt plan we've ever seen.

[Jim]

Since campaign promises mean little or nothing anyway and everyone understands this, the repubs could just sit on their hands for a year while Obamacare completely disintegrates. The insurance companies would all be out of it by then and premiums and copays so high that the ACA would simply implode, thus forcing the Congress—especially the democrats—to get on board or let the country drown in its own self-inflicted pain. The new plan will not be perfect but it will be constitutional, meaning that SCOTUS Chief Roberts, the actual villain (illegal fine just a tax? Stupid!) will be properly reprimanded for making the unread ACA possible. Even Justice Kennedy thought he was NUTS. Collecting from citizens in real time the money for use in real time (those personal accounts as per Rand Paul actually guaranteed just like Medicare) would make sense. Everyone in the country is not sick at the same time and millions of folks not until they’re as old as the hills, like me. Problem: Nearly half of households pay no taxes, although they could be required to pay, at least the ones with a wage-earner, to pay up, just like with Medicare, whether they like it or not. Insurance companies could compete for the trade in additional and necessary self-covering insurance and perhaps help drive down medical costs. Last year, on two separate occasions, I spent six hours in the hospital—total cost about $65,000, not counting doctors’ payments. Common sense has no place in government.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

I wouldn't say that campaign promises don't mean anything. Trump promised a health care program to replace the ACA that would be less expensive than Obamacare, and would guarantee universal coverage. His supporters bought that line, and now many of them are shrieking at their representatives and senators in town hall meetings as the new Republican proposal leaves most of them with less than they had, the orange haired buffoon's constant spewing of "believe me" notwithstanding. The wheel doesn't have to be reinvented to come up with a workable plan, but that requires focusing on the health of individual Americans as a priority, and a government setting rules that apply equally to everyone, including regulating and limiting the profiteers. Bottom line, if the Trump/Ryan/Republican plan, which is really nothing more than a way to give tax breaks to the wealthy, doesn't provide what the buffoon promised, it's not going to be pretty.

[JE Pettibone]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

[KeithE]

[Jon Estes]

[Jon Estes]

[Haruo]

My wife gets good treatment at the VA Hospital here. The best hospitals in Seattle, including the one she was born at and the one I was born at, are nonprofits.

I'm not saying she gets perfect treatment, but she gets as good as she would from any for-profit hospital I've looked at. Not all VA hospitals are as good as ours, and there are better hospitals here by far than the VA, but it's still a good source of medical care.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

[Sandy]

[Jim]

Repubs have done nothing to sabotage Obamacare. It was designed from the get-go to fail and thus sabotaged by its designers in order to place everyone’s health-care in the hands of the government (single payer as admitted by Obama). MIT’s Gruber admitted as much when he testified that he was hired to make the act obfuscated enough to keep the public from knowing what was in it, and Pelosi made it plain that this was so when she was silly enough to claim that its provisions would be known AFTER its enactment, not before. Obama was smart enough to never enforce the employer-mandate as required in 2014 when it became obvious that especially small businesses would make radical adjustments, such as the 30-hour work-week and part-time jobs the rule instead of the exception. Medicare was enacted in the 1960s with the government required to administer it. By the 1980s, it was discovered that the government could not handle it, so its administration was turned over to the insurance companies. Whether a right or a privilege, universal health-care is possible only when designed along the lines of Medicare for everyone, with treatment any time needed and the cost, like SS and MC, deducted from wages. In this way, the healthiest would pay for years, like Medicare, until they needed it for cause. If necessary, adjustments could be made, like with the graduated income tax, so that the wealthiest would be responsible for bearing a greater share of the cost, though that sort of wealth re-distribution would be unfair. Administration should be left to the insurance companies with the proper regulations enacted by Congress. Obama was divisively caste-oriented but one gall bladder is worth any other no matter to whom it belongs.

[KeithE]

[Jim]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

K: No use arguing with someone who doesn't show any attention to the links and other points I make. Just declaring "moot" and changing the subject is not worthy of a response.

This is the perfect example of the inflexibility and elitism indicative of the liberal/socialistic mindset. If no reasonable response is available, just turn ad hominem for a bit of spleen-venting. On a lighter note, attached is a short-short from my book Regulator & Other Stories. Since you're retired you may have a few minutes to waste. It sort of describes Obamacare as it appeared when introduced. If no interest, no harm done.