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If Obamacare is so bad....

Cvir said:
And here is one of several Republican plans, proposed in 2007. This one by Mike Enzi and it had some great features: "Ten Steps to Transform Health Care in America Act (S. 1783) introduced by Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) July 12, 2007." This was just one of about 4 others, all blocked by Max Baucus, Democrat, head of the Finance Committee back in 2008.
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Much of that bill is now law under the ACA (and the HITECH Act).
 
Really.
Here are 5 components of the proposal..I don't think any are part of Obamascare.
1. Eliminates unfair tax treatment of health insurance for all Americans, thereby expanding choices, coverage, and control over your health care
2. Increases affordable options for working families to purchase health insurance through a standard tax deduction
3. Ensures affordable health insurance to low-income individuals through a refundable, advanceable, assignable tax-based subsidy
4. Provides cross-state pooling to reduce health care costs and increase accessibility for small business owners, unions, associations, and their workers, members, and families
5. Blends the individual and group market to extend important HIPAA portability protections to the individual market so that insurance security can better move with you from job to job.

But the point is....Republicans have put forth plans. This is just one of them... as opposed to some on this thread who either lied or did not know about them. I will give them the benefit of the doubt though and assume they were just ignorant of the facts.
 
Here's item 7 of Enzi's proposal..this definitely is not part of Obamacare.

7. Gives you the choice to convert the value of your Medicaid and SCHIP program benefits into private health insurance, putting you in control of your health care, not the Federal government
 
Here's another Republican proposal, shut down in committee by Max Baucus...

• Senators Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Healthy Americans Act on January 18, 2007 and re-introduced the same bill on February 5, 2009.
 
Cvir said:
Really.
Here are 5 components of the proposal..I don't think any are part of Obamascare.
1. Eliminates unfair tax treatment of health insurance for all Americans, thereby expanding choices, coverage, and control over your health care
2. Increases affordable options for working families to purchase health insurance through a standard tax deduction
3. Ensures affordable health insurance to low-income individuals through a refundable, advanceable, assignable tax-based subsidy
4. Provides cross-state pooling to reduce health care costs and increase accessibility for small business owners, unions, associations, and their workers, members, and families
5. Blends the individual and group market to extend important HIPAA portability protections to the individual market so that insurance security can better move with you from job to job.

But the point is....Republicans have put forth plans. This is just one of them... as opposed to some on this thread who either lied or did not know about them. I will give them the benefit of the doubt though and assume they were just ignorant of the facts.
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Define affordable in terms of a percentage of their income. For example, if one makes $1,800/month, and has rent/utilities of $1,200 month leaving about $600 for all other expenses (including food, transporation and entertainment), then what dollar amount is affordable for that individual's medical care insurance?
 
Cvir said:
Really.
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Really. The ten steps identified by Enzi are:

Eliminates unfair tax treatment of health insurance for all Americans, thereby expanding choices, coverage, and control over your health care
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This refers to ending tax expenditures on employer-based health insurance--true, the ACA does not do that (beyond limiting it via the Cadillac tax)! Interesting fact, by the way: Enzi's bill had an individual mandate in it.

Increases affordable options for working families to purchase health insurance through a standard tax deduction
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This is more or less the same point as the first one (changing the tax treatment of insurance to stop encouraging employer-based coverage).

Ensures affordable health insurance to low-income individuals through a refundable, advanceable, assignable tax-based subsidy
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26 U.S. Code § 36B - Refundable credit for coverage under a qualified health plan

Provides cross-state pooling to reduce health care costs and increase accessibility for small business owners, unions, associations, and their workers, members, and families
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I'm not really sure what this one is supposed to be.

Blends the individual and group market to extend important HIPAA portability protections to the individual market so that insurance security can better move with you from job to job
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Extending consumer protections to the individual market was sort of the name of the game: 42 U.S. Code Subpart 1 - general reform

As for merging the individual and small group markets, states have that option here: 42 U.S. Code § 18031 - Affordable choices of health benefit plans.

Emphasizes preventive benefits and helps individuals with chronic diseases so America will finally have health care and not sick care
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42 U.S. Code § 300gg–13 - Coverage of preventive health services

Gives you the choice to convert the value of your Medicaid and SCHIP program benefits into private health insurance, putting you in control of your health care, not the Federal government
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That possibility already exists under existing federal waiver authority; Arkansas famously starting doing this "private option" for Medicaid in 2014.

Saves lives and money by better coordinating health information technology to improve health care delivery
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42 U.S. Code Subchapter XXVIII - HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND QUALITY

Increases access to primary care in rural and frontier areas by helping future providers and nurses pay for their education, and gives seniors more options to receive care in their homes and communities
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42 U.S. Code Subpart 3 - recruitment and retention programs (and much more) and several options for home and community-based services added to 42 U.S. Code § 1396n

Decreases the sky-rocketing cost of health care by restoring reliability in our medical justice system through State-based solutions
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42 U.S. Code § 280g–15 - State demonstration programs to evaluate alternatives to current medical tort litigation
 
Vern said:
MR, if you are incapable of discussing the thread topic and have to incessantly whine about me I have to ask, why are you in the thread? Anyhoo, this thread is about “if Obamacare is so bad, why cant republicans come up with a plan, let alone a better plan”. And just so you know, this explains why republicans are now talking about delaying repeal to 2018 (here's a hint, its what democrats have been telling you for years)
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You are the one not talking about the thread topic. You would rather belittle everyone who disagrees with you rather than discuss the thread topic.
 
Cvir said:
• Senators Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Healthy Americans Act on January 18, 2007 and re-introduced the same bill on February 5, 2009.
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And that was built on exchanges, consumer protections, and subsidies, anchored by an individual mandate. It's similar to the ACA's underlying structure for the individual market, the difference is that it goes much further and eliminates employer-based coverage. In other words, it's what the ACA would look like if someone decided we should put everybody into the individual market, instead of 10-20 million people who can't get coverage somewhere else.
 
Greenbread:

You might be right. I was responding to Vern's original thread post who falsely claimed that Republicans had no replacement plans for Obamacare. He was wrong. I'm not defending anybody's plan, but we do know that Obamacare is buckling on it's own weight. If parts of some Republican plans made their way into Obamacare, fine. I'm sure any plan proposed by either Republicans or Democrats will have several common components.
 
Cvir said:
Vern's been dismissed.
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You really don't understand the concept of debate do you because "nuh uh, they do have a plan" is just you posting wishful thinking. So, don't assure us republicans have a plan show us. While we wait forever for something resembling a plan, lets look at this for example

In one faction are lawmakers increasingly wary of the pitfalls of a quick and sweeping repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In recent days, top congressional Republicans who are most intimately involved in health care policy have urged moderation: Fearing the consequences of a rapid repeal, they have begun to speak of "repairing" the law and even preserving aspects of it that are working.

Republicans begin to grumble: Why haven't we repealed Obamacare yet? - CNNPolitics.com

Repair?!?!?!? what happened to "repeal"? what happened to "repeal and replace"? What happened to "repeal and delay"? Anyhoo Cv, you should google the word "dismissed". It doesn't mean what you think it means. And don't forget, this is a debate forum not a chat room.
 
Cvir said:
Greenbread:

You might be right. I was responding to Vern's original thread post who falsely claimed that Republicans had no replacement plans for Obamacare. He was wrong. I'm not defending anybody's plan, but we do know that Obamacare is buckling on it's own weight. If parts of some Republican plans made their way into Obamacare, fine. I'm sure any plan proposed by either Republicans or Democrats will have several common components.
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That's the conundrum the GOP is in. Most of what they proposed in the decade prior to the ACA went into the ACA or related legislation. That's why they've had such trouble coming up with a real replace (not to mention moving forward with the repeal they promised).

We now have consumer protections in the individual market, we have competitive marketplaces, we have tax credits for low-to-middle income people.

We've had a huge investment in health information technology, there is authority for state-level tort reforms, some states have experimented with private option Medicaid approaches.

Insurers do now cover evidence-based preventive services with no cost-sharing and a lot of money was put into training new doctors, nurses, and others. Community health centers did get a huge influx of money to build new facilities and revamp old ones to increase their capacity.

What was the big idea Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Devin Nunes, and Richard Burr were pushing in the months before the ACA was unveiled?

To ensure affordable, quality coverage for all, we propose real insurance reforms that reorient the incentives of these companies so that they jibe with patients. Our bill encourages state-based solutions - in the form of voluntary health exchanges. These exchanges will prevent cherry-picking against those deemed uninsurable and will be made possible with risk adjustment mechanisms and other state-level options such as reinsurance and risk pools.
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Sounds familiar! So now they twist themselves into pretzels attacking things they once supported and trying to find a coherent alternative. Not easy to do!
 
Greenbeard said:
That's the conundrum the GOP is in. Most of what they proposed in the decade prior to the ACA went into the ACA or related legislation. That's why they've had such trouble coming up with a real replace (not to mention moving forward with the repeal they promised).

We now have consumer protections in the individual market, we have competitive marketplaces, we have tax credits for low-to-middle income people.

We've had a huge investment in health information technology, there is authority for state-level tort reforms, some states have experimented with private option Medicaid approaches.

Insurers do now cover evidence-based preventive services with no cost-sharing and a lot of money was put into training new doctors, nurses, and others. Community health centers did get a huge influx of money to build new facilities and revamp old ones to increase their capacity.

What was the big idea Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Devin Nunes, and Richard Burr were pushing in the months before the ACA was unveiled?



Sounds familiar! So now they twist themselves into pretzels attacking things they once supported and trying to find a coherent alternative. Not easy to do!
Click to expand...

You are certainly right, the Republicans have quite a knot to untangle with Obamacare. To quote USA Today: "The nearly 11,000 pages of regulations for this one law alone would reach three feet high if you made the mistake of printing it." The Democrats made this so complicated that it will be most difficult to fix, repair or replace. As John Gruber, the academia, who helped write the bill said, and I'm paraphrasing, "we intentionally made the language in the bill "torturous" to make it more difficult for the average voter (who he called stupid) to understand. On top of all this, they had to lie to everyone about its "benefits" to get it passed. So the Democrats create a terrible piece of very complicated legislation, lie to get it passed and then have the nerve to chastise Republicans because they can't quickly fix it. Talk about hypocrisy.
 
Vern said:
Why can’t republicans come up with a better plan? How about a plan? Yea, they’ve had 6 years. We’ve had 3 full years of the exchanges. Certainly there is enough data from that alone to help come up with a plan. it doesn't even have to be a better plan. They can just lie that its better and their base wont hold them accountable. Their base just needs something to repeat over and over. I'm thinking something along the lines of “sure it covers fewer people and costs more but its better because there are no death panels”.

Certainly even some conservatives have to start to wonder how "repeal and replace" got repealed and replaced with "repeal and delay"?
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You do realize that the Obama administration didn't pass a bill until the year after Obama took office, right? If the old system was so bad why did it take them so long.. etc. etc.

Also, preemptively pointing out that it also took 4 years to fully implement Obamacare... you know, to counter the inevitable "If Obamacare is so bad why it is taking so long to implement the new plan?!" idiocy.
 
Vern said:
Why can’t republicans come up with a better plan? How about a plan? Yea, they’ve had 6 years. We’ve had 3 full years of the exchanges. Certainly there is enough data from that alone to help come up with a plan. it doesn't even have to be a better plan. They can just lie that its better and their base wont hold them accountable. Their base just needs something to repeat over and over. I'm thinking something along the lines of “sure it covers fewer people and costs more but its better because there are no death panels”.

Certainly even some conservatives have to start to wonder how "repeal and replace" got repealed and replaced with "repeal and delay"?
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A better plan is easy but politically unacceptable. They are cowards.
 
Vern said:
Why can’t republicans come up with a better plan? How about a plan? Yea, they’ve had 6 years. We’ve had 3 full years of the exchanges. Certainly there is enough data from that alone to help come up with a plan. it doesn't even have to be a better plan. They can just lie that its better and their base wont hold them accountable. Their base just needs something to repeat over and over. I'm thinking something along the lines of “sure it covers fewer people and costs more but its better because there are no death panels”.

Certainly even some conservatives have to start to wonder how "repeal and replace" got repealed and replaced with "repeal and delay"?
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Except that the actual account of chronically uninsured prior to Obamacare was only 8 to 13 million
 
fmw said:
A better plan is easy but politically unacceptable. They are cowards.
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A better plan is easy? Perhaps, but getting Democrats to let go of Obama's "signature, piece of poo" legislation will not.
 
My insurance premiums have skyrocket and my deductible shot up like a boner in a nudie bar.

I don't know if it's Obamacare, insurance companies or a fattened medical industry that charges 15 dollars for a Tylenol served in a 14.00 paper cup. But **** is ****ed up.

I think we need turn back the clock 30 years and have ourselves a do-over.
 
Cvir said:
A better plan is easy? Perhaps, but getting Democrats to let go of Obama's "signature, piece of poo" legislation will not.
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Very easy. They get rid of obamacare completely. They maintain the subsidies for those who receive them now for the next 5 years. They open state borders to all insurance carriers. They work on tort reform. That is all that is required. The democrats don't have enough votes to stop such an effort. The problem is that the swamp is inhabited by cowards.
 
fmw said:
Very easy. They get rid of obamacare completely. They maintain the subsidies for those who receive them now for the next 5 years. They open state borders to all insurance carriers. They work on tort reform. That is all that is required. The democrats don't have enough votes to stop such an effort. The problem is that the swamp is inhabited by cowards.
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The Democrats do have enough votes to stop it. It takes 60 votes to pass the senate, the republicans only have 52.
 
Vern said:
You really don't understand the concept of debate do you because "nuh uh, they do have a plan" is just you posting wishful thinking. So, don't assure us republicans have a plan show us. While we wait forever for something resembling a plan, lets look at this for example

In one faction are lawmakers increasingly wary of the pitfalls of a quick and sweeping repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In recent days, top congressional Republicans who are most intimately involved in health care policy have urged moderation: Fearing the consequences of a rapid repeal, they have begun to speak of "repairing" the law and even preserving aspects of it that are working.

Republicans begin to grumble: Why haven't we repealed Obamacare yet? - CNNPolitics.com

Repair?!?!?!? what happened to "repeal"? what happened to "repeal and replace"? What happened to "repeal and delay"? Anyhoo Cv, you should google the word "dismissed". It doesn't mean what you think it means. And don't forget, this is a debate forum not a chat room.
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Are you suggesting that the plans I cited are wishful thinking? How is that? They are plans proposed by Republicans including the most recent plan put forth by Ryan. Regardless what you think of the plans, these are facts, not "wishful thinking". And your criticism of Republicans for not coming up with a fix is rich. Democrats come up with an 11,000 page incredibly controversial and complicated plan, which took at least 2 years to formulate, 4 years to implement, written in torturous language, and required lies to get it passed, and you chastise Republicans, who just came to power less than 2 months ago for not coming up with a quick fix. Really?
 
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