[Discussion] Health Policies and ACA Reform/Repeal

The existing health thread is for discussion on how changes to current policy will/have personally affected you or those you know. This thread is for more general discussion of the subject.

which could cost less and have less generous coverage than the plans now available.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

HAHAHA
Ha... oh man.

Meanwhile, in reality, they'll continue to go up in price, more coverage will cost more because of course it does... and that's about it?

No, I expect the price in coverage to actually go down. People will be able to get super sweet "Lifetime Maximum plans" that are illegal again. They will be cheaper, and every now and then* someone will go over their lifetime maximum and die from lack of treatment.

System working as intended.

*Adjusting "every now and then" for a population of 320 million of course means "every single day".

Oh right, the absolutely worthless plans will be back. Greeeeeeeat.

My friends who had invested in them earlier will actually, truly, be thrilled and think it's "cheap health care", just what they need...

With Coverage in Peril and Obama Gone, Health Law’s Critics Go Quiet

WASHINGTON — For seven years, few issues have animated conservative voters as much as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But with President Barack Obama out of office, the debate over “Obamacare” is becoming less about “Obama” and more about “care” — greatly complicating the issue for Republican lawmakers.

It's almost like the whole thing was really about Obama being black...

Edwin wrote:

It's almost like the whole thing was really about Obama being black...

While there is a lot of truth to that, remember that the Republicans fought really hard against Bill Clinton, including impeaching him and mud-slinging at his wife (later on when she was a Senator, etc, etc, that was attacking her, but it started back when she was first lady as a proxy for Bill). Recent Republicans have been hugely ornery against anyone with liberal leanings, regardless of the tone of their skin.

Yonder wrote:
Edwin wrote:

It's almost like the whole thing was really about Obama being black...

While there is a lot of truth to that, remember that the Republicans fought really hard against Bill Clinton, including impeaching him and mud-slinging at his wife (later on when she was a Senator, etc, etc, that was attacking her, but it started back when she was first lady as a proxy for Bill). Recent Republicans have been hugely ornery against anyone with liberal leanings, regardless of the tone of their skin.

True, but there was still the occasional bit of legislative compromise and bipartisanship. Not a lot of it, mind you, but some. Budgets got passed. Our infrastructure didn't crumble into the ground so that a few Rs could feel like big badasses by denying literally everything the President was doing, regardless of the needs of the American people to have things like highways that aren't in complete disrepair.

Demosthenes wrote:
Yonder wrote:
Edwin wrote:

It's almost like the whole thing was really about Obama being black...

While there is a lot of truth to that, remember that the Republicans fought really hard against Bill Clinton, including impeaching him and mud-slinging at his wife (later on when she was a Senator, etc, etc, that was attacking her, but it started back when she was first lady as a proxy for Bill). Recent Republicans have been hugely ornery against anyone with liberal leanings, regardless of the tone of their skin.

True, but there was still the occasional bit of legislative compromise and bipartisanship. Not a lot of it, mind you, but some. Budgets got passed. Our infrastructure didn't crumble into the ground so that a few Rs could feel like big badasses by denying literally everything the President was doing, regardless of the needs of the American people to have things like highways that aren't in complete disrepair.

It may not be equal to what Clinton faced, but it's certainly been on trend with the conservative movement since at least 1994 (and probably earlier).

I'm sure at least some of the opposition to Obama was racially motivated, but there's absolutely no reason to think it wouldn't have existed without it.

Trump, Congress, and the Plan for Block Grants and Medicaid
*like this channel on youtube

LeapingGnome wrote:

How are poor people supposed to pay for the insurance while they are waiting a year for their tax refund to come in?

Through the same magic that makes increased caps for IRA contributions help someone with limited income save for retirement.

Trump: 'Nobody knew health care could be so complicated'

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."

All these intellectual elites are trying to make this stuff sound complicated to confuse you. You just need common-sense solutions!

**Gets elected**

f*ck. Running a nation is complicated.

farley3k wrote:
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."

#inigofacepalm

Haven't we learned yet? Trump is everyone. If he thinks a thing, then "lots of people" think or say that thing. If he didn't know a thing, then nobody knew. He's the ultimate populist because he is all of us.

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

I'm reliably informed that Communism is *not* the solution, Nomad. (And that Democrats are Communists, so...).

Robear are you mixing up Communism and Socialism again?

IMAGE(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/312/563/05d.jpg)

I subscribe to a Facebook group called Paying Till it Hurts, started by Elizabeth Rosenthal, formerly of the NYT and now at Kaiser Health News. Definitely worth following if you're on Facebook.

Recently this article was posted, critiquing the GOP's love of high-risk pools. It explains that even the most successful high-risk pools end up providing no improvement to the ACA because the costs will still get passed on to everyone not in a high-risk pool. If anything, it will cost us more:

The national plan Ryan has proposed would subsidize high-risk pools with $25 billion of federal money over 10 years. The nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund estimates the approach could cost U.S. taxpayers much more than that — almost $178 billion a year.

It also mentions an intriguing idea that I think deserves more attention from Congress:

University of Minnesota health policy professor Lynn Blewett said there is a better alternative than a return to high-risk pools. It’s called “reinsurance.” In that approach, insurers pay into a pool that the federal government administers, using the funds to compensate health plans that incur unexpectedly high medical costs. It’s basically an insurance program for insurers...

Researchers at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company say reinsurance would likely cost about a third of what the high-risk pool option would.

Nomad wrote:

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Edit: America elected a Russian influenced facist because it was butt hurt over some 70k, largely symbolic coal jobs. What do you think flyover America is capable of when you attack health care?

Paleocon wrote:
Nomad wrote:

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Nomad wrote:

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

That is precisely what I am saying.

The profit in most industries is created when there are structural inefficiencies. When a market becomes infinitely efficient, it also becomes nearly profitless. The fact that we have SUCH an inefficient health care system is precisely why we have seen such record asset and employment growth in a segment of the service sector that shouldn't have experienced it.

Folks make billions on defense because we spend nearly half the world's defense budget. Most of this is on crap that doesn't advance our national security one iota. And like I said above, the white working class was willing to flush cement down the federal toilets over some 70k, largely symbolic, coal jobs. I can guarantee you it would be willing to set fire to orphanages over reducing the profitability of health care.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

Inefficiencies creates jobs everywhere. There is a lot in Healthcare that is handled by humans (even sometimes moving just moving files back and forth) that could have been done electronically for the past twenty years.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

I agree that a simple switch to single payer would kill a lot of jobs. However, that's not a reason to not do it. It's a reason to do it carefully, with some sort of government-sponsored plan for helping those people. Job training, college education, unemployment compensation, relocation expenses, etc., could all be at least partially subsidized by the government for some period of time to transition people out of a job sector that is doing more harm than good. Honestly the same thing should have been done for coal workers, automotive plant workers, seamstresses, switchboard operators, human computers, warehouse operators, journalists, (truck drivers eventually), and every other job sector that has died off or been replaced by technology.

Is there any political will to do that? Of course not.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

Inefficiencies creates jobs everywhere. There is a lot in Healthcare that is handled by humans (even sometimes moving just moving files back and forth) that could have been done electronically for the past twenty years.

See, my ex-wife, whose job was literally to double check and make sure that the radiologists and doctors for their outpatient scanning center were up to date on their credentials and that was about it.

Mixolyde wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

I agree that a simple switch to single payer would kill a lot of jobs. However, that's not a reason to not do it. It's a reason to do it carefully, with some sort of government-sponsored plan for helping those people. Job training, college education, unemployment compensation, relocation expenses, etc., could all be at least partially subsidized by the government for some period of time to transition people out of a job sector that is doing more harm than good. Honestly the same thing should have been done for coal workers, automotive plant workers, seamstresses, switchboard operators, human computers, warehouse operators, journalists, (truck drivers eventually), and every other job sector that has died off or been replaced by technology.

Is there any political will to do that? Of course not.

This is absolutely the case. The pure magnitude of people who have jobs either digging holes or filling pits means that we'll probably need a careful staged adjustment to health insurance (exactly why I liked the ACA, I was hoping that after 4-5 years National or State single-payer plans could be inserted into the Exchanges to provide for a smoother transition).

The "good" news is that our country is so large, and has so much data and oddities from our existing patchwork solution, that no matter how good our new solution is there will still be years and years of work for tens of thousands of people to do all the book keeping of implementing and transitioning to the new system!

Paleocon wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Nomad wrote:

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

That is precisely what I am saying.

The profit in most industries is created when there are structural inefficiencies. When a market becomes infinitely efficient, it also becomes nearly profitless. The fact that we have SUCH an inefficient health care system is precisely why we have seen such record asset and employment growth in a segment of the service sector that shouldn't have experienced it.

Folks make billions on defense because we spend nearly half the world's defense budget. Most of this is on crap that doesn't advance our national security one iota. And like I said above, the white working class was willing to flush cement down the federal toilets over some 70k, largely symbolic, coal jobs. I can guarantee you it would be willing to set fire to orphanages over reducing the profitability of health care.

I have some great news for you then. I have it on good authority that the structural inefficiencies will not magically evaporate in a single payer system. Quite the opposite in fact in the beginning. A huge transition like that would create many thousands of employment opportunities, and all of the QC redundancy in the providers themselves would need to continue. A single payer system would also need thousands of workers to handle the health care processing demands of the entire US population, effectively replacing the jobs lost in the insurance sector. The true losers in the new system would be the obscenely paid CEOs and executive staff of the health insurance industry, and the investors that are making money from their profit margins.

Nomad wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Nomad wrote:

I have a simple solution.

Spoiler:

Single payer healthcare.

As much as I agree that a single payer solution would solve the problem, it would also create a whole new one. That being that at least a significant part of the employment and economic growth in the last 20 years has been directly in the health care sector. That has happened precisely because of the structural inefficiencies that allow for massive profit taking. Turn off that tap and you might as well say we're cutting the defense budget by 50% per year and expect Raytheon to survive.

Are you suggesting that making health care more efficient and effective would be a bad thing because the folks that are profiting from those inefficiencies would lose their jobs? (Not snarky, just seeing if that's what you meant.)

That is precisely what I am saying.

The profit in most industries is created when there are structural inefficiencies. When a market becomes infinitely efficient, it also becomes nearly profitless. The fact that we have SUCH an inefficient health care system is precisely why we have seen such record asset and employment growth in a segment of the service sector that shouldn't have experienced it.

Folks make billions on defense because we spend nearly half the world's defense budget. Most of this is on crap that doesn't advance our national security one iota. And like I said above, the white working class was willing to flush cement down the federal toilets over some 70k, largely symbolic, coal jobs. I can guarantee you it would be willing to set fire to orphanages over reducing the profitability of health care.

I have some great news for you then. I have it on good authority that the structural inefficiencies will not magically evaporate in a single payer system. Quite the opposite in fact in the beginning. A huge transition like that would create many thousands of employment opportunities, and all of the QC redundancy in the providers themselves would need to continue. A single payer system would also need thousands of workers to handle the health care processing demands of the entire US population, effectively replacing the jobs lost in the insurance sector. The true losers in the new system would be the obscenely paid CEOs and executive staff of the health insurance industry, and the investors that are making money from their profit margins.

Y U H8 jerb kre8rs?

Paleocon wrote:

Y U H8 jerb kre8rs?

How ironic that after all this talk about healthcare I'm dying of an untreatable sudden brain aneurysm.

Not reforming healthcare for fear of destroying jobs is exactly the same kind of thinking that is going into the "bring back manufacturing jobs" push we're seeing right now. We're telling states and contractors to spend 78% more money for American steel than buying Chinese because all that cheap steel was costing American steel worker jobs. So, for healthcare, we'll just tell people to keep going into bankruptcy when they get a major illness because we don't want all those doctors, nurses, and nurse assistants to lose their jobs.