Health Care Debacle

....Actually, prescription ******* costs are 2nd to none in cost drivers in health care. When President Bush implemented Medicare Pt. D, it basically removed the authority of Medicare of negotiating prescription ******* prices. Also, if you recall, everything President Obama wanted to implement regarding any health care costs was blocked by Congress with the single objective of making his health care plan a failure ... recall 2016 when Obama tried to implement ******* reimportation:

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/05...effort-reduce-prescription-*******-costs.html

....When you can figure out exactly what it is that conservatives are doing to improve health care for the country, please share it. So far I've only seen attempts at removing all entitlement plans to private sector and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Deregulation only sends the industries, impacted, the message that its ok to do "business as usual". I imagine if there were no speed signs on the highways, just a sign to "Drive Safely" ... people would be driving at all speeds on the highways. Some regulating is necessary, particularly in our current form of "profit driven" capitalism.
....You hear all this talk by conservatives of allowing everyone to purchase their health insurance across state lines. Obviously those saying that don't think these kinds of ideas all the way out ... if states are allowed to set up their own regulations toward 'health care' ... some will develop honest, customer protection health care that is good. But, there will be a few states that only care about the money they bring in and will write "junkcare" which is not clearly written for a purpose, and basically pays for nothing relevant to healthcare ... and they will price it low, and buyers will not understand their coverage sucks until they have to use it. So your basic health care buyer ... the ones similar to the ones that didn't know that the ACA and Obamacare were one and the same ... go and buy the health care plans with the least premiums only to find out, in time of a real medical need, that they have NOTHING in coverage.
 
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MacNfries said:
When you can figure out exactly what it is that conservatives are doing to improve health care for the country, please share it. So far I've only seen attempts at removing all entitlement plans to private sector and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Deregulation only sends the industries, impacted, the message that its ok to do "business as usual". I imagine if there were no speed signs on the highways, just a sign to "Drive Safely" ... people would be driving at all speeds on the highways. Some regulating is necessary, particularly in our current form of "profit driven" capitalism.
....You hear all this talk by conservatives of allowing everyone to purchase their health insurance across state lines. Obviously those saying that don't think these kinds of ideas all the way out ... if states are allowed to set up their own regulations toward 'health care' ... some will develop honest, customer protection health care that is good. But, there will be a few states that only care about the money they bring in and will write "junkcare" which is not clearly written for a purpose, and basically pays for nothing relevant to healthcare ...
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I was just in to see my former employer because open enrollment has started again. Part of my retirement package is they pay for healthcare for as long as I live. The meeting is just informational. One of the first comments out of person I was talking to was how fucked up and confusing the system is. The company obviously has more resources than the average person, then there is the threat of penalties if you fail to comply. So I wonder how many and how badly retired people are getting screwed because they don't understand the rules. My health insurance is apparently is outside of Medicare, I think it is a Part C Advantage plan. I recently signed up for Social Security since I will be 66 shortly. In the telephone interview follow up the woman I talked to told me that since I didn't sign up for Part B last year when I signed up for Medicare that if I signed up for Part B in the future there would be a 10% penalty. I inquired how long the penalty would be in effect and she told me that it was permanent. So if I live to be 200 years old I will pay a 10% penalty every year I take Part B. So I call my former employer and talked to the appropriate people. The guy I talked to just laughed. He said Medicare was a rip off and that the company got better coverage for less money and that the government was actually paying part of the premiums. I liked that.
 
Torpedo said:
Democrats are fond of blaming Republicans for undermining Obamacare, especially as conservatives attempt to overhaul the law. But experts and insurers point out that while Republicans aren't blameless when it comes to the strength or fragility of the law, many of Obamacare's wounds were inflicted by the Obama administration itself.

The law struggled for years when Obama was in office, even though his administration created it. Many of the problems were the result of short-term fixes by the Obama administration through the use of executive decisions, waivers, and deadline extensions. These inflicted losses for insurers in the exchanges. Those decisions by Obama slashed choices for customers and hiked prices, especially for those who were not receiving federal subsidies.
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Anything the Republicans are going is little more than Obamacare Version 2. A lot of the "patches" that Obama applied made things worse.
 
Torpedo said:
But some of the decisions that were made also injected instability into the insurance marketplace. Republicans and regulatory experts sometimes sued to prevent Obama's adminstratives, which they said overstepped the limits of presidential authority. This was particularly so when the president authorized federal payments to insurers, "cost-sharing reduction subsidies," without Congress making the necessary appropriation.
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I always found that an interesting abuse of power. The Executive branch is ordering payments that Congress hasn't appropriated the money for.
 
Torpedo said:
"The current morass is in no small part due to the failure of Congress to protect its legislative authority over years of executive overreach," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University School of Law. "Both parties have contributed to the rise of an uber presidency that can effectively negate or amend federal laws through executive orders. I have been a long critic of this trend and encouraged Congress to re-assert its inherent authority over both legislation and the purse. Presidents now wrongly treat bills passed by Congress as the start of the legislative process, subject to their unilateral corrections."
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This is a biggie and can easily traced back to the the younger Bush and probably earlier. For quite sometime the Office of the President had changed the law under Executive orders. Obama was the worst abuser but Trump might catch up. The checks and balances built into our system of government can prevent such abuses but Congress sat on their collective asses and did nothing. The way it is supposed to work is that the two houses of Congress pass a bill then it goes to the White House. The President either signs it or doesn't. The president doesn't sign it and then proceed to rewrite the implementation of the law to suit his whims
 
Torpedo said:
IRS data offers insight into who paid the law’s individual mandate penalty in 2015 for not buying health insurance, the latest year for which figures are available. Spoiler alert: The payers aren’t Warren Buffett or any of the other wealthy folks Democrats say they want to tax. More than one in three of taxed households earned less than $25,000, which is roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four.

More than 75% of penalized households made less than $50,000 and nine in 10 earned less than $75,000. Fewer families paid the tax in 2015 than in 2014, yet government revenues increased to more than $3 billion from about $1.7 billion, as the financial punishment for lacking coverage increased.
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When I read this in the Journal it really pissed me off. Generally even at the Federal level preliminary figures are available within a month or two of the end of the tax year or in the case of the IRS within a couple of months of the filing deadline. It takes considerable time and effort to get everything right, but being 90% or better is entirely doable and should be readily avialable. In a nutshell either Obama knew or he didn't want to know who was getting hurt the most by the penalties in Obamacare. A full third of those penalized are the working poor. So people are faced with purchasing something they may not want or can afford even with subsidies or not purchase insurance, paying a penalty and put food on the table
 
MacNfries said:
Actually, prescription ******* costs are 2nd to none in cost drivers in health care. When President Bush implemented Medicare Pt. D, it basically removed the authority of Medicare of negotiating prescription ******* prices. Also, if you recall, everything President Obama wanted to implement regarding any health care costs was blocked by Congress with the single objective of making his health care plan a failure ... recall 2016 when Obama tried to implement ******* reimportation:
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It is interesting you brought that up. No argument it is a dumb idea. Preventing the largest purchaser of the prescription ******* from negotiating prices could arguably be called criminal.

Then Obama came along and handed us a mandatory health care system that had no real cost controls. AND the premiums could be Federally subsidized. Now if that isn't a formula for ******* the government and the consumer I don't know what is. The health care industry will charge what it will. The insurance industry has no real incentive to control costs because they are limited to a fixed maximum percentage of profits based on the type of policy. and if health care prices get too high they just demand more subsidies. What do they do if they don't have their demands met? Just pull out of a market(s). Leave one but never more than two in the exchanges or offering policies in a given market. With only one insurer left it is easier to demand additional subsidies when the money gets better more insurers will re-enter the market. The health care industry raises costs and the premium and subsidy game starts all over again.

Despite what you may think Trump's move to allow purchases across state lines is really a brilliant move. A small smart insurer could easily rapidly grow to control a significant part of the market. Something the majors insurers definitely don't want.

I have never been a proponent of big government. But in the case of healthcare the only viable option is a single payer system that has the authority to negotiate everything. AND just as importantly be barred from spending money it doesn't have.
 
MacNfries said:
The one in denial are you conservatives who think the Republicans truly want to provide Americans health coverage. They have no intention of doing that. The republicans blocked important changes that could have been made to make the ACA run better ... because they wanted it to FAIL. Heck, even Trump, with his loose lips, admitted that. Now deny THAT! And if you're counting ... 62 times it went to Congress for votes ... and failed to ******* ACA. Each voting cycle on the ACA cost the American taxpayers over $700,000 ... that's $700,000 times 62 ... squandered .... figure that cost out.
....Republicans are going to try ONCE AGAIN to shift the cost of health care back to the people ... just so they can give that huge Trickle Down tax cut to their rich donors. And its very possible John McCain will be unable to vote this time ... one LESS no vote to have to stop them. I honestly feel, however, some other Republicans are going to step up this time. They've already cut Medicaid by a million ... and Medicare isn't that far off before they try to privatize it.
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It is interesting that you are so opposed to any type of privatization. I don't really get involved with it but as I understand it I am not in Medicare. I know that I am not paying for Part B. I think I have something called an Advantage plan. My former boss says it costs less money and provides better coverage. I don't care one way or another, my retirement package says they pay all my medical as long as I live.

$700,000? That's chump change. The national debt went up $10 trillion during the Obama administration. You still don't seem to grasp that there is way too much special interest money for the ACA to go away. Imagine this, a single payer system goes into effect and they start telling the medical industry what they will pay for services. and then the poor insurance industry that has more money that the banks will need to find an additional source of revenue. Of course there will be the argument that with a single payer health care will suffer. Right now our health care system is by far the most expensive in the world and the care is comparable to a lot of third world countries
 
Torpedo said:
$700,000? That's chump change. The national debt went up $10 trillion during the Obama administration. You still don't seem to grasp that there is way too much special interest money for the ACA to go away.
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....That's $700,000 TIMES 62 = $43.4 million and we aren't even adding in the residual costs. Then, you add in the costs associated with NINE, soon to be ELEVEN Republican Benghazi committees to try to get Hillary ... again, without adding in the residual costs of lawyers and our elected senators non-productive work time for the country and the tax payers ... it goes on and on. And they get NOTHING done for the country but continued party division.
....By the way, all this WASTED money Republicans spend could have just as easily been channeled to the SNAP (food stamps) program that the Republicans have cut and cut the budget for the past few years. This year (2017) they've already cut $23 million ... as they put more money in the military budget. So how does that impact the poor? It eliminates 11 million people from receiving food stamp assistance ... eleven million POOR PEOPLE.
..../Just imagine if President Trump would agree to not play golf for a year until they could work out a budget for the SNAP program ... HE, ALONE, could save enough of wasted tax dollars to put BACK the money they took that put 11 million off SNAP in 2017.

pic_political-CutsToPoor.jpg
 
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MacNfries said:
Just imagine if President Trump would agree to not play golf for a year until they could work out a budget for the SNAP program ... HE, ALONE, could save enough of wasted tax dollars to put BACK the money they took that put 11 million off SNAP in 2017
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It might be interesting to see who played the most golf per year Obama or Trump
 
I am a bit baffled why the Democratic Party is so hung up on Obamacare. It is hanging by a thread. The Medicare Advantage plans appear to be just that an advantage and a cost saving. The logical thing to do is get rid of Medicaid and ACA and expand Medicare to everyone. Everyone has the Red, White, And Blue card. If private insurance can do a better job cheaper then so be it. One of the disturbing things about this process is I wonder how many are being screwed because they don't understand the rules. You get fined if you don't get insurance, you are fined if if you don't get part B, you are fined if you don't have Part D. Maybe we need a cabinet level "Department of Punishment.
 
MacNfries said:
When you can figure out exactly what it is that conservatives are doing to improve health care for the country, please share it. So far I've only seen attempts at removing all entitlement plans to private sector and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Deregulation only sends the industries, impacted, the message that its ok to do "business as usual". I imagine if there were no speed signs on the highways, just a sign to "Drive Safely" ... people would be driving at all speeds on the highways. Some regulating is necessary, particularly in our current form of "profit driven" capitalism.
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The private sector seems to be doing well with the advantage plans. Like it or not something does need to be done about entitlements. One of the reasons workforce participation is so low is that it is way too easy not to work. Take a look at the numbers that went on disability during Obama's tenure. The number of people applying for and receiving disability spiked sharply, I find it hard to believe that all of a sudden there is all these disabled people
 
Torpedo said:
It might be interesting to see who played the most golf per year Obama or Trump
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All you had to do is ASK since your search engines obviously don't work. Before you LOOK, who do you think has played more golf? And Trump's press secretary often hides his golfing by saying they don't know. I know one thing, Obama didn't fly AirForce One to his Florida club and charge our government for a couple dozen Secret Service rooms at double the normal rate. If he had, do you not think the Republicans would have made an issue of THAT information every day?

https://freepresspolitics.com/2017/02/25/who-golfs-more-trump-or-obama/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...plays-more-golf-donald-trump-or-barack-obama/
 
MacNfries said:
All you had to do is ASK since your search engines obviously don't work. Before you LOOK, who do you think has played more golf? And Trump's press secretary often hides his golfing by saying they don't know. I know one thing, Obama didn't fly AirForce One to his Florida club and charge our government for a couple dozen Secret Service rooms at double the normal rate. If he had, do you not think the Republicans would have made an issue of THAT information every day?
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It may not have been all golf but the Obama's did put a lot of hours on Air ******* One
 
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