Not “panels” as such. Credit rating, mostly. Yeah, I’m pretty much boned. You?
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That was probably the single largest factor, but the Republicans actively worked to sabotage the ACA on multiple fronts. Red States refused to expand Medicare and refused to set up exchanges. They constantly tried to repeal it. They ran ad campaigns encouraging young people not to sign up. They bought dozens of legal challenges against various provisions.
The last one has backed them into a corner because it compels them not to include any of the provisions they challenged, including the mandate. And there is absolutely no other effective way to deal with pre-existing conditions.
Anyway, this bill is a joke. No one with more than two working brain cells could look at this bill and say “this is really something terrific”. There isn’t enough lipstick in the universe to make anyone want to embrace that pig. Some lawmakers may touch it with a ten foot pole out of blind partisanship but their constituents will probably eviscerate them.
Really, how do you sell this thing? Here’s our terrific plan!! Choice ! IWe’re going to let you BUY insurance at full market price! We are going to release your boss from the freedom killing burden of having to offer you insurance so you may get to buy it yourself for the very first time! And you’ll have plenty of choice! If you are one of those folks who just wants to quietly die if you get cancer, there’ll be an option for you. Are you one of those people that doesn’t like prescription drugs! You can buy a plan that doesn’t cover them! Want to save money? You can buy a plan with no deductible that covers everything for like $100 bucks a month. The only catch is that there is a yearly maximum benefit of $2000 whole dollars, so don’t get TOO sick.*
See, you’ll have plenty of choices!! Choice Choice Choice !! And your employer might decide to give you a raise since they won’t have to pay those pesky insurance bills, or they might decide to just keep the extra money. But he is the creator of your job and you should rejoice in his newfound freedom.
Really…you’ve all seen the TV footage of the fired up populace at the recent town hall meetings,right? You couldn’t sell this new plan to that crowd even if it covered blowjobs.
But they won’t sell it, because the “replace” in repeal and replace was always a Republican dog whistle – there was never any intention of replacement. Every now and then when my digestive tract is feeling strong, I summon up the intestinal fortitude to watch me a little Fox News in the name of opposition research. And I heard them come right out and say it. … I think it was the 5 o’clock show The Five. ,they said “Replace? Everyone knows there’s not going to be a replacement. There’s nothing wrong with the way things were before ObamaCare” Then they went on about how really sick people could always go to the emergency room, then digressed into a particularly callous discussion about how if everyone was insured there wouldn’t be enough medicine and doctor’s offices to go around and they might have longer waits and there might be poor people in the waiting room stinking up the place and spreading their poor people germs and wouldn’t that suck.
Anyway, this new bill won’t go anywhere and neither will anything else, but they may finagle a straight up repeal through the House and Senate and we’ll be back to where we were before.
Anyway, I don’t know what happened here, I just intended to shoot off a quick response to AngelSoft but I couldn’t stop.
- This “insurance” plan with a $2000 maximum benefit was a real thing, sold extensively through employers like McDonalds and WalMart. And I put insurance in quotes because these plans weren’t really insurance - they were initially intended as bridge plans to cover the all or part of the deductible on a high deductible policy. In fact the plans had big labels on them that said “THIS IS NOT INSURANCE” but those labels fell off before they got to the consumer.
And because they covered so much in terms of routine care and were so cheap, people that never had anything serious happened loved these policies.
So I take it you’re happy with the death panels you have now. You do realize that every time an insurance company decides not to cover a life-saving procedure – and they do it a lot – it’s the result of a health insurance company’s “death panel?” Only the reason they’re limiting your care is because there won’t be enough profit in saving your life.
The so-called “death panels” proposed with the ACA were simply the review and oversight boards that would be put in place to determine what reasonable standards of care are for the general populace. They were to be made up of experts in their fields, including many medical professionals. We have them now, with Medicare. The reason for this is the law of diminishing returns.
Want to get a colonoscopy after age 80 under Medicare? You can get one, but you’ll pay for it out of pocket. Up to age 80, an invasive procedure designed to catch colon cancer is beneficial. Most people can easily withstand the procedure. After age 80, even if they find bowel cancer, it’s probably not the thing that’s going to kill you, and as bowel walls thin with age, you are much more at risk of suffering a perforated bowel from the procedure than when you were younger.
A profit motive doesn’t enter in to the determination of reasonable standards of care for the population as a whole.
Get it?
It’s fun to call them “death panels,” though, and pretend Sarah Palin had something of consequence to say. And it saves having to actually learn what the term means and how it is important to the success of any universal health care system. Most if not all countries with UHC have them.
This story gets better! Chaffetz uses an iPhone that was paid for out of his campaign donations! That isn’t illegal if he used it for campaign business, and the GOP has made it legal for him to use such a phone for Congressional business as well — but not for personal business. (Chaffetz’ office was unavailable for comment on the rumors that he had illegally used his campaign-donated iPhone for personal business.)
So, one takeaway from the photo flap in this thread is that it’s getting difficult to tell a Russian troll from a stupid American.
I’m pretty sure this is a woosh, with Marshmallow riffing on Republicans not being able to remove something that wasn’t there in the first place in spite of how much they touted it.
So being more expensive is SAVING UP TO $2500?
LOL, oh, dear. I believe you are right. The mere mention of “death panels” makes my blood boil.
Apologies to Marshmallow, and an Emily Litella, “Never mind.” And thanks, Buck Godot, for bringing it to my attention. :o
It doesn’t matter how callous the discussion is if there aren’t enough medical personnel to treat everyone. I don’t recall seeing a particularly unbusy pharmacy or doctor’s office recently: from what I can see they’re all pretty much booked already. Now that may change if you dismantle the ACA, but it might get unacceptably worse if it’s expanded and the supply of medical personnel does not change. I’ve never seen a plan to address this since it appears to me (and I could be wrong) that that’s something we’d need to take into account if we brought truly universal coverage. In my mind, the weak link is the medical training pipeline. The cost of doctors and other trained personnel is probably not an issue since even if you have to pay them more to entice those on the margins to work, you can save as much or more money on bureaucracy, but those former insurance filers can’t instantly become doctors and nurses.
I can only speak for myself (and I live in a major urban area) but I never have a problem getting timely medical appointments- around Christmastime I decided I needed to see my physician and I was able to book an appointment on January 5th, and it probably would’ve been sooner if she hadn’t been on vacation.
And when I got to that appointment she wanted me to see a specialist ASAP, so her office made a call and ASAP turned out to be “walk down the street to this office RIGHT NOW and they will see you right away” -that one impressed even me.
Now her waiting room can be crowded but that’s because it’s a large group practice, not a reflection of wait times. And the lines at the pharmacy don’t mean “they have more business then they can handle”. They mean, this is a successful business and maybe if I don’t want to wait I should come in at a different time. It’s not like they have a limited supply of medications and people fighting for them. I can’t imagine my pharmacist saying" we’re too busy, I wish we didn’t have as many customers "
That’s where the free market comes in. If there are not enough hospitals or doctors, then prices go up, hospitals and doctors become profitable, new ones appear.
If it becomes a real crisis, then the government can step in and a) create new hospitals (public works ! JOBS!™) b) hand out incentives so that more doctors/pharmacists are trained and/or new pharmacies are easier to get off the ground c) relax artificial barriers against foreign medical personnel recertification for a quick fix…
“The Republican health-care plan isn’t about health care at all”
IOW it’s about money. Making sure the rich get more of it and fuck everyone else.
Sound like the bit about firing up the private prisons is because Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III wants to style himself a Drug Warrior.
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
Oh, the bitter irony.
“The GOP’s Obamacare replacement is a disaster for some of its most loyal voters”
Why do I feel that when the story gets told, it will somehow turn out to be Obama’s fault?
A top Freedom Caucus rep admits he mostly likes Obamacare: House Republicans are finally making a big admission: They like Obamacare!
:smack: Christ on a cracker.
In Iowa today Aetna announced it was pulling out of the individual exchanges. A few days ago Wellmark (Blue Cross/Blue Shield–the largest health insurer in the state) announced it was pulling out. There is a third small insurer; I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes too–leaving no insurers for the state. A significant factor mentioned in the articles was the Trump decision not to enforce mandates.
Or when prices rise, some people get less care, and the supply stays about the same.
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