If Trump really wants to work with a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans, the first thing he needs to do is rescind the EO that cripples the mandates.
And the Dems should call for this immediately. And vocally. And they should be loud when they are turned down. You can blather all you want about the ACA being about to fail, but with the EO in place it like bragging that you KNOW your neighbors car is going to fail - after you opened the hood and removed a bunch of random parts.
Under normal circumstances, a malpractice suit is just looking to recover damages, and make the patient whole. This means suing for the amount required to fix the problem the first procedure created, and also suing for expenses related to being hospitalized for an extra period of time. This may mean missed work, this may mean paying daycare and babysitters. There may be a quality of life change after a botched surgery. If a patient requires an in-home nurse a few times a week, or needs to update their home or vehicle to deal with a new handicap caused by the doctor, that’s also money out of the patient’s pocket.
Are you saying that those are the parts that shouldn’t be made whole? Which parts? Should the patient have to pay to have a medical procedure that is only necessary because of medical practitioner’s mistake? Should the patient have to lose their wages, or have large payouts required of them, due to no action of their own? Should the patient just accept the new quality of life and costs of living that have been required of them due to someone else’s error?
Then there are punitive damages. These are rare, but ware awarded by a jury or judge when it is shown that someone has been grossly incompetent, or even intentionally harmful. In these cases, the point of the money is to punish the doctor, and to discourage other doctors from cutting corners or actively harming their patients. If punitive damages were restricted, then doctors would not have to worry about consequences of poor performance on their parts.
Then there’s the fact that all of malpractice, including the bulk of the cost of defensive care, (unnecessary tests and procedures doctors prescribe from a CYA perspective) is less than 3% of all healthcare spending, so even if you essentially just eliminated medical liability altogether, you are not going to put any sort of dent in the issue.
I read this excellent article the other day on The Atlantic, titled “How the right-wing media saved obamacare”. It talks about how the way the right-wing media talked about Obamacare wasn’t just “this bill is wrong”, but rather, “this bill is going to kill your parents”. Not, “Here is a cogent and realistic critique of the bill” but “Obamacare was drafted as population control!” So when the actual costs of repealing Obamacare became an actual topic, people were blindsided. The republicans never had to, and therefore never tried to, make the case for why we should really repeal Obamacare. Because they had a case. Based completely on bullshit, but their base already knew that Obamacare was killing people and completely awful and a statist ploy, and given that, how do you walk them back? Even if you wanted to seriously talk about it, you’re oging to end up confusing the ever-loving hell out of your base, who wonders why you’re talking about “tradeoffs” when talking about death panels.
Which is what Democrats did when Bush signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (Medicare Part D) in spite of their votes against it:
Of course this required working to help constituents and identify weak points in the law and attempt to make them better.
In other words, governing. And putting country before party.
Trumpcare, Trumpcare 2.0, Zombiecare, AHCA, whatever you want to call it is back. I had such a nice week last week, so I guess I’m refreshed and ready to roll.
Call your representative. For it? Agin it? Call your representative. Make your voice heard. I was just on a call with Nancy Pelosi (not one on one or anything!) where she talked about how much the calls matter.
Gallup: Yuuuuge swing in ACA favorability, from 42% viewing it favorably, 53% unfavorably in November, to 55% favorable, 41% unfavorable now.
86% of Dems, 57% of independents, and 17%* of Republicans view the ACA favorably. Only 30% of Americans (overwhelmingly GOP, of course) feel it should be repealed and replaced.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Mr Art of the Deal tried to pull that stupid negotiation tactic where you walk out of the auto dealership thinking that the salesperson is going to chase after you with a better deal.
But they stood out in the parking lot for week and now they are slinking back into the sales office - and I don’t think they are in a better position. They were hoping that there would be a huge public outcry when Ryan announced that “ObamaCare is the law of the land” but that didn’t happen … instead the nation joined together in a collective sigh of relief.
I don’t think it’s going to go any better this time, unless maybe they manage to keep Trump out of the room ( which was probably rule one of the Trump Organization deal-making strategy).
But I wish Republican lawmakers would just come out and say " Mr President, this is NOT EVEN CLOSE to what you promised and I’m not going to help you break one of your central campaign promises"
To paraphrase a joke I once heard about the physics job market, I think today’s Republican proposals are about average: that is worse than last week’s, but better than next week’s.
It was clear from the get-go that the Trump Administration tried to steamroll the bill through to pull a fast one on people. I thank their stupidity and the town-hall meetings where people, including lots of Republicans, informed themselves online and realized the ACA was saving their sick butt, and that Trump Care would have eventually led them astray.
I’m so tired of calling my reps. For long and boring reasons, I’m registered in Florida, so I have to call Marco Rubio (among others).
I have now started posting to Marco Rubio’s Facebook page any time he posts about how awful the ACA is, or how they need to get government out of healthcare. The lastest? "Wow, if government-funded healthcare is so bad, when will you come out against the Attending Physician of the United States Congress? Where, for $600 a year, Congress members can access:
All of it government-funded and carried out by government employees. But for us plebeians, GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE BAD. :mad:
