One of the scurrilous lefty newsites I visit pointed out that for Trump’s huge victory, no signing ceremony with photos is planned. A letdown, I am reassured when I see how he can sign his own name.
Nah, that was for the continuing budget resolution. For this one there’s nothing to sign until the Senate gets through with it, and they threw a big kegger to celebrate anyway.
They held a kegger in the Rose Garden. Does that count?
I hate to say it especially as someone whose spouse has an expensive medical condition, but this might be a place where it might be prudent to risk the wrath of Palin’s past and consider death panels.
Due to HIPAA restrictions nothing specific is known about the person other than they have a complicated genetic condition; so we don’t know what treatment he/she is receiving or what their quality of life is like as a result.
One thing you can say is that a pool of 30,000 (the Iowa exchange market) is too small for a patient who needs this much care. Personally I’d take it as an argument that the risk pools should be bigger, but you want to argue for death panels, be my guest. A hard cap on lifetime limits for this patient might have that effect in any event, but I guess we don’t know for sure.
QFT
No, it doesn’t disqualify you. It does raise your premiums. (In the old days it might have also gained you an exclusion, so your rates went up AND the insurance would never, ever cover anything skin-related).
The insurance companies are not your friend. They exist to maximize premium collection and minimize payouts.
As I said - these companies are not your friend. They employ lawyers to sit around all day coming up with new days to dick you out of your benefits.
excess creates excessive responses. If the R’s can’t simply find a way to fix the ACA, instead trying to develop a plan as soon as possible in this non-election year that will make health care far more expensive for low and middle income families (even, yes, those with employer provided insurance), the best way to respond is to throw out those bastards in 2018 and implement single payer. Maybe only persecution will bring the people to worship.
Insurance companies don’t cause higher and higher health care costs. Innovation in the drug industry and the medical device industry drives a lot of the increased costs from year to year. If a drug is not available or a device or a test not available to treat my condition, it won’t cost anything to treat or test me with those unavailable items.
What about all of the drugs and medical devices created in other countries that have universal healthcare? It seems to me that these drugs and devices are available and are used, while still costing less than in the U.S.
Why don’t the ‘free market Republicans’ simply allow the government to negotiate drug prices with the manufacturers?
Crane
Because they don’t actually believe in the free market. They believe in whatever benefits them and their benefactors the most.
“Free Market” is a campaign lie. The truth has dollar signs on it.
Oh, don’t look so shocked.
Those countries don’t allow DTC advertising. So their pharmaceutical companies are not spending a fortune on boner pill commercials. They spend it on R&D. Something that our government is still spending millions on.
Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
Make it up in savings, not having to advertise oxycodone. Just manufacture, package and ship, and oh! how the money rolls in!
I believe that SDMB users have just simply gotten tired of the Thrumpcare debate. As of today, a vote on proceeding to the floor debate stage in the Senate has been postponed because it would not pass. this post just serves as a bookmark to indicate to the future poster what was happening as of today. The bill, as it stands in the Senate today, is a callous attempt to make a few “I don’t want to have to buy insurance” people happy, raise the price of insurance to everyone, often by a stupefying amount, and give rich people and companies a big tax break. Typical Republican merciless, un-Christian bananas, born in the concept that no one should have to pay taxes that are used to make someone else’s life better. In the concept that the real world should be populated only by winners, and the rest should just die.
It’s time to give up on repealing it, which they aren’t really doing anyway, and get down to fixing it and molding it more into the Republican image. This would include:
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REpeal of the individual mandate and replacing it with enrollment periods and penalties if you buy insurance after you get sick. No penalties would be levied if you bought insurance while still healthy.
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Repeal of the mininum standards. The government does not need everyone to have comprehensive care. The government does need to make sure people are not at risk of medical bankruptcy. Catastrophic plans insure that sufficiently. Let people go back to buying minimalist plans if they want it.
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Institute co-pays for preventive services. Making preventive services free was based on questionable science and doesn’t actually save patients money. It just makes the premiums higher to make up for it.
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There is no moral argument for making young workers pay more so that older workers can pay less. We’re not talking infirm retirees here, we’re talking older workers who are making a lot more than younger workers on average. There’s also the policy problem with this idea: if younger people are forced to subsidize older workers, they won’t by insurance, which is what is happening now. Lure young people back into the pool by having them pay premiums that are closer to the actual risk they represent.
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keep the Medicare Advantage cuts. Democrats said those were just waste anyway, so no problem.
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Keep the ACA taxes. We need the money and ACA is not holding costs down, which means even with Republican changes that reduce the cost of the program, costs will still rise significantly every year.
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Keep the Medicaid expansion as is. States of course can still say no, or leave at any time.
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Keep the subsidies as is.
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Strengthen the cost saving measures. Make IPAB powerful enough to cut Medicare the way BRAC closes bases. Death panel the shit out of IPAB. It’s hypocrisy and Republicans should be called on it, but it’s also good policy.
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In counties where there are currently no ACA insurers, allow a Medicaid buy in as a public option.
Do you really think the tea partiers will go for that?
Won’t work without them, or without including Democratic input, but they won’t go for it either in this form.
What is the coalition that will get this to pass in the Senate? I don’t think the votes are there. Probably couldn’t pass the House either.
The votes aren’t there to pass anything comprehensive, but they could agree on smaller changes, except that they promised repeal.
But once they realize that’s not going to happen, they’ll start chopping away at it in smaller chunks.