I don’t normally post videos as seedstock for bbq posts, but this was so blatant and filled with the full shit show of conservative propaganda and talking points on healthcare, it needed to be shared.
Julio, the conservative, could have been almost any conservative, he did a fine job of parroting the standard responses and deflections that conservatives are want to offer, and it's a god damn disaster. To all conservatives reading this, who agree with Julio. I just want you to know something, from the bottom of my heart. You are all incalculable morons. We will eventually get a single payer system in the US, and in another thousand years of American civilization, citizens will read about this time period and who was opposed to something that made so much sense, and treat you are little different from the Luddites of old. You are a disgrace to life and thought, and make me ashamed of being human, knowing that creatures this confused are members of the same species.I am not a true conservative but liberals have to step up their game. ObamaCare isn’t just a plan that needs some tweaks, it is a fucking disaster. Liberals keep focusing on the 20 million people or so that got (mostly crappy) subsidized health insurance from it but that isn’t a good measure. What they are ignoring are the vastly larger numbers of other people (especially the middle class) that had their health insurance premiums skyrocket AND their health insurance effectively disabled because of the massive proliferation of high-deductible plans. In other words, people like me have to pay thousands of dollars a year for health insurance now but you can’t actually use it for anything short of a major car accident. That wasn’t anything like what was advertised. Health care is more unaffordable than ever for the people that actually pay for everyone else and that isn’t right.
Where the Left and liberals are going wrong is that they should just acknowledge this reality and try to come up with a plan of their own that covers more people AND saves money. They aren’t doing that right now. Republicans are trying to. Their plan sucks too but at least they are putting in the effort to come up with something. Otherwise, the whole system is going to collapse even more than it already has.
If you have a better plan, let’s hear it but it better be backed up with realistic numbers and not just some pipe dream. I can promise you that conservatives would love to wash their hands of this problem as much as anyone.
Good, then you want universal healthcare, so do I.
The problem is first showing how big a problem this is, and showing that it’s actually an effect of the ACA.
And I do not agree with you that the Republicans are trying. They are not trying to come up with a plan that covers more people. They are trying to cut spending. That’s why the people who will die over this do not seem to matter.
The reason Democrats aren’t trying to reform the ACA is that, by and large, the public likes it. They say Obamacare sucks, but, when you ask them about the aspects of the ACA, the only one they don’t like is the mandate, and the mandate is necessary for the rest. Plus, if you explain the reason for the mandate, responses change.
If the Republicans were really trying, they would go for universal healthcare of some sort, since that has been shown to reduce costs, and by its very nature covers everyone. That is not what they are trying.
They can also take money from the military, instead of increasing funding. They could push for other forms of revenue. But their primary goal is to cut spending, and the healthcare of Americans takes a back seat.
Democrats worked a long time to get the ACA passed. They realize it’s about the best they can pass. And they are the minority party. They know they can’t pass anything else. Their goal right now is just to stop the Republicans, who can pass something.
I am not happy with the ACA either. I would like something better. But I don’t think anything better can pass, and the Republicans are only offering things that are inherently worse, because cutting spending is the primary goal.
A single payer health scheme won’t fly in our current economic climate. Many sacred cows will have to be gored for it to be feasible. One of the biggest ones will be the outrageous cost of healthcare and medicine. A significant part of that will be stemming the tide of malpractice suits and therefor the cost of malpractice insurance. Something in that plan to upset the left and the right so I’ll call it balanced. Overly simplistic I know, but economics isn’t really my thing so I’ll leave it to the experts to work out the plan. Then to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, I’ll know a good plan when I see it. And I would really like to see it.
Nit-pickery… No one will be reading about it in a thousand years except for some really specialized historians. A hundred maybe, but there will have been way too much history in the next millennium for this to be more than a dusty footnote.
I would like to add another voter in favor of the fact that the version of Romneycare that was further savaged by the Republicans before becoming what is now called the ACA is, indeed, a shitshow.
It’s better than what was before, and is hella better than the bullshit that the republicans are trying to pull now, but it could easily have been much better. And by “easily” I mean “fuck the republicans and the horses that were ridden in by.”
That isn’t easy, and is no more fair to Republicans than what they are trying to do to us.
Single payer would cause some government regulations over how much drugs and health care costs.
Single payer Medicare for All covers everyone and would save money if it is done correctly, i.e, politicians who feed at the trough of the the medical and drug lobbies wouldn’t be allowed to attach amendments which will allow those parasites to continue to rip us off.
Here’s 10 better plans. Commonwealth fund. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
How about we lower the eligible age for Medicare by five years every year? That gives time to see how single payer would work out.
That’s very smart. Add in ‘permit Medicare to negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry’ and we’d be in very good shape to see massive improvements in both health and efficient delivery of healthcare.
If the government were paying for more healthcare, I believe they would cause prices to be lower.
As long as Conservatives are in control, the priorities are going to be profits for the companies that are involved in healthcare services, then, after that’s taken care of, healthcare for some people, as long as rich people don’t have to take a hit in helping pay for it. Last and assuredly least, healthcare for poor people that can’t really pay for much of it at all. That’s going to really make a dent in corporate profits, so it ain’t gonna happen. That’s how it’s going to be as long as American numbskulls keep voting for Conservatives.
My idiot boss who is a hoosier who has no problem coming to Illinois every day for the job told me today that my paycheck was going to be smaller in the coming weeks. Zat’so, I asked him. Yup, he read on the internet that Illinois was raising the income tax. ( To avoid pointing out that he was an idiot, I didn’t ask him if the Governor had signed the bill. ) But that’s all these Conservatives think about. Taxes. What are they spending that someone else is *taking.
*If helping someone that can’t pay for something involves helping to pay for it, that’s a dealbreaker.
People need to stop thinking that single-digit percent improvements are irrelevant. Healthcare is a complex enough system that there are no silver bullets. If that 2.4% can be cut in half, that’s a huge thing. Find another 20 items like it and we’ll be in pretty good shape. As they say: a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
It is not a huge change. Billions are big numbers, but measured against hundreds of billions, it isn’t a huge change.
CBO estimated the impacts of malpractice reform on the Federal budget. In 2015, Medicare spent about $550 billion. The cost savings of malpractice reform was estimated by CBO to be $1.1 billion in that year.
I don’t have a particular objection to malpractice reform, but it is being presented as a cost savings measure. Zero point two percent in savings is bullshit. If there are 19 ideas to go along with this one, let’s hear them.
The link above says that $45B was spent just on defensive medicine. The savings aren’t just on lawsuits.
A tiny list of things which are probably low-single-digit improvements on an individual basis, but would add up to something significant:
- Improved drug price negotiation
- Limits on drug advertising
- Increased supply of doctors
- Decreased overhead in insurance processing
- Decreased emergency room use due to more preventative care
- Fewer costs pushed from non-payers to payers (i.e., current costs are inflated in part due to people that can’t pay for treatment)
- Better efficiency in ambulance services
- Better allocation of hospital resources due to better policies on effective treatment
- Better resource allocation from improved cost transparency
This list is not meant to be comprehensive; it’s just what I came up with in five minutes. Some of the items come automatically with a single-payer system; others would have to be separate efforts.
Another one that would never fly but I’d like to see is official support for medical tourism. Expensive, non-acute procedures like hip replacement could be done out of country if they met certain standards. People do this already, off the books, but there’s no reason a single-payer system couldn’t support it.
Steve McQueen had cancer surgery in Mexico and died the next night, but I hear that their dentistry is good and inexpensive.
Drug advertising-why the hell do they do that? The Pain Doctor asked me, “Have you seen the commercials for simponi?”
I responded, “Hell, no. You are the guy to suggest what drugs I take.”
Do you mean surgery in Mexico is dangerous?
It was for Josh Randall. Inoperable cancer according to expensive US doctors. Mexican surgeon said, “Yeah, sure, no problem, 50 bucks.”