If Obamacare is so bad....

joG said:

Oh don't worry about that dishonest ploy. Trying to shift responsibilities to others is normal for liberals.

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er uh Jog, this thread about republicans saying they want to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. when Jimbo doesn't understand what the thread is about and flails about, he cant help it. When you do it, its dishonest.

chuckiechan said:

I think what people are missing is this battle is all about the 40 million people who did not have health insurance for one reason or another, prior to Obamacare.

There are better ways to fix that than completely dismantling the existing system, and building a new federal system.

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sorry chuckie, once again a conservative has to post a fantasy to obediently flail at reality. There was no dismantling of anything. You can still call up an insurance company and buy insurance. Now the only difference is they don't ask you a bunch of questions then you wait to see if they'll allow you to buy it. And chuckie, this thread is about the republicans claiming they want to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Its not about whatever delusion pops in your head. Be it "dismantling" anything or this doozy

Don't kid yourself. Full - on socialized, unionized medicine was the ultimate long term, goal, and the Democrats were willing use false promises to screw the 320 million who were just fine to get there.

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hey, remember when you believed President Obama was born in kenya or that he wanted to kill old people. you're still believing the same liars.

Visbek said:

And where does that leave us?

• Insurance premiums were rising at double-digit rates for a decade before the ACA was passed.

• There was no guaranteed issue. Insurers spent millions trying to find reasons not to cover people who were a bad risk, or ratepayers with expensive or chronic issues.

• We'd have to kick millions of people off of Medicaid.

• Insurers can reinstate lifetime limits on individuals.

• Insurers can go back to not covering preventative care.

• No more exchanges. Ever try to buy health insurance on your own pre-ACA?

Why is that not sounding particularly fantastic?

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Probably because obamacare is even worse.

Vern said:

Certainly even some conservatives have to start to wonder how "repeal and replace" got repealed and replaced with "repeal and delay"?

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Repeal-and-delay acknowledges two facts:

1. Obamacare is better than no Obamacare
2. The GOP has no functional alternative to Obamacare

So it stays on the books.

Visbek said:

And where does that leave us?

• Insurance premiums were rising at double-digit rates for a decade before the ACA was passed.

• There was no guaranteed issue. Insurers spent millions trying to find reasons not to cover people who were a bad risk, or ratepayers with expensive or chronic issues.

• We'd have to kick millions of people off of Medicaid.

• Insurers can reinstate lifetime limits on individuals.

• Insurers can go back to not covering preventative care.

• No more exchanges. Ever try to buy health insurance on your own pre-ACA?

Why is that not sounding particularly fantastic?

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Government was involved in healthcare to the detriment of healthcare.

If you get government out of it, you will find costs go down and services improve, just like any service being provided.

The following was from an interview with Milton Friedman in 2006. It's spot on.

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/emfree-to-chooseem-a-conversation-with-milton-friedman/

LA: Is there an area here in the United States in which we have not been as aggressive as we should in promoting property rights and free markets?

MF: Yes, in the field of medical care. We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care.

Instead of letting people hire their own physicians and pay them, no one pays his or her own medical bills. Instead, there’s a third party payment system. It is a communist system and it has a communist result.

Despite this, we’ve had numerous miracles in medical science. From the discovery of penicillin, to new surgical techniques, to MRIs and CAT scans, the last 30 or 40 years have been a period of miraculous change in medical science. On the other hand, we’ve seen costs skyrocket. Nobody is happy: physicians don’t like it, patients don’t like it.

Why?

Because none of them are responsible for themselves.

You no longer have a situation in which a patient chooses a physician, receives a service, gets charged, and pays for it. There is no direct relation between the patient and the physician.

The physician is an employee of an insurance company or an employee of the government.

Today, a third party pays the bills. As a result, no one who visits the doctor asks what the charge is going to be—somebody else is going to take care of that. The end result is third party payment and, worst of all, third party treatment.

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Greenbeard said:

Repeal-and-delay acknowledges two facts:

1. Obamacare is better than no Obamacare
2. The GOP has no functional alternative to Obamacare

So it stays on the books.

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Unlike the 2,700 page abortion called ObamaKare which Only Demokrats passed the law with parliamentary tricks despite Massachusetts voting in a Republican to take Dead Kennedy's seat to STOP ObamaKare...

...Republicans will do what Demokrats did not do. Demokrats told us we had to pass the law to learn what was inside it. Republicans will untangle the tentacles of this bastardized legistlation and sell Americans on the solution bit by bit.

ObamaKare will die. It's a burden on the economy, on families, on individuals, on business... and Democrats want it to die too because it is a failure.

And that erases Obama's signature item. The remainder of his legacy is a slew of executive orders, and these will be erased as well.

Obama legacy will be one of no accomplishments, of obstruction, of race baiting, of foreign policy, domestic policy and economic failure.

That's what will stay on the books.

zimmer said:

...Republicans will do what Demokrats did not do. Demokrats told us we had to pass the law to learn what was inside it. Republicans will untangle the tentacles of this bastardized legistlation and sell Americans on the solution bit by bit.

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No, they won't. But don't stop believing.

Greenbeard said:

No, they won't. But don't stop believing.

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ROTFLOL...

Time will tell.

We'll measure the success by the screaming coming from the Left.

zimmer said:

ROTFLOL...

Time will tell.

We'll measure the success by the screaming coming from the Left.

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The current screaming is coming from WITHIN the GOP as they know what will happen to them in 2018 with repeal but no REPLACE.

GOP liars have had 6 years to figure out a replace.

Leadership is a bitch, Mitch .

NIMBY said:

The current screaming is coming from WITHIN the GOP as they know what will happen to them in 2018 with repeal but no REPLACE.

GOP liars have had 6 years to figure out a replace.

Leadership is a bitch, Mitch .

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LOL... if they repeal it, and it's not replaced in full by 2018... that'll be OK. Folks are sick of ObamaKare and it's lies about costs and service.

Time will tell.

It'll be fun to see the krooked house change hands in 2018 .

zimmer said:

LOL... if they repeal it, and it's not replaced in full by 2018... that'll be OK. Folks are sick of ObamaKare and it's lies about costs and service.

Time will tell.

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chuckiechan said:

I think what people are missing is this battle is all about the 40 million people who did not have health insurance for one reason or another, prior to Obamacare.

There are better ways to fix that than completely dismantling the existing system, and building a new federal system. Don't kid yourself. Full - on socialized, unionized medicine was the ultimate long term, goal, and the Democrats were willing use false promises to screw the 320 million who were just fine to get there.

It's the Republicans fault for not doing anything about it when they had he numbers that led to Obamacare in the first place. So here we are, trying to construct a form of Obamacare that works.

There are only three payers: the patient/family, the employer, or the government,

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VanceMack said:

Prior to passage of the ACA, the numbers range from 11-18% uninsured, depending on who's studioes you believe. Most of those were not uninsurable...they were simply uninsured. many of those uninsured were by economic choice. They chose to invest in tattoos and video games and cheetos and tobacco and any number of convenience items rather than investing in health care insurance. Choice.
That means 82-99% had somehow managed to figure out how to obtain health care. And MOST were actually quite satisfied with their coverage.
Was health care perfect? No. Some things should have been changed. Torte reform should still be imposed. Insurance companies SHOULD be forced to not drop clients based on legitimate healthcare needs. As for the uninsured, those that were unable to financially secure healthcare should have been placed on state/fed funded healthcare. We didnt need to blow up a system...we needed an 11-18% solution.
Ive heard it suggested that whatever system congress passed/passes/omposes, that first and foremost they and their immediate families should be subject to. Id go for that.

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It is not just about getting coverage. It was about the way insurance companies weaseled their way around actually authorizing the treatment you were do. Pre ACA I had to advocate for my mom. It seemed like a full time job at times. She was lucky enough to have a daughter that was quite tenacious and knew what was right medically, I have a friend that had to take a huge loan against her house to expedite treatment on her aggressive metastatic breast cancer. It took a lawyer and 6 months to finally get payment approved. She would have been dead if she hadn't gotten treatment in short order. That was pre ACA.

year2late said:

It is not just about getting coverage. It was about the way insurance companies weaseled their way around actually authorizing the treatment you were do. Pre ACA I had to advocate for my mom. It seemed like a full time job at times. She was lucky enough to have a daughter that was quite tenacious and knew what was right medically, I have a friend that had to take a huge loan against her house to expedite treatment on her aggressive metastatic breast cancer. It took a lawyer and 6 months to finally get payment approved. She would have been dead if she hadn't gotten treatment in short order. That was pre ACA.

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Sounds like she had Kaiser.

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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They can, but they don't want to.

Health Care is a status symbol for Conservatives. They can't fathom the idea that everyone can have Health Care. They want to *conserve* the privilege of health care for the privileged, the elites, the rich and the whites.

They spend a lot of resources for the hundreds of lawsuits against health care for everyone in the US. That's their core MO -- they can't have everyone having health care... what would that do to their superiority ego?

It doesn't need to be repealed and replaced. It needs to be abolished.

I'm 50 years old and in very good health. I was dropped by my insurance in 2016. My agent found another plan for me which costs almost 50% more and has less coverage than my previous plan.

Obama said we could keep our plan. He lied.
He said our costs were going to go down. He lied.

I have a close friend whose family also got dropped. He's married with three children. The cheapest plan his agent could find cost over $3000 a month (that's a starting salary form some people). What working family can afford that? So he had no choice but to sign up for Obama Care. Now the State is kicking in $1800 a month for their family. $1800 a month! Who is paying for that? How many other families is the state kicking in $1500 to $2000 a month? How long can the state sustain that kind of assistance for it's citizens?

Now with their shiny new Obama Care plan they are not covered at the Mayo...unless they move to the area. Again, Obama lied.

What happened to them is exactly what Obama and his lackeys wanted: For private insurance to become so expensive that no one can afford it, forcing us all to go on Obama Care. There's a word for that....it's called coercion and you Obama Care lovers don't even know it. If this had been a republican plan you would all be out for blood but to you folks he's the golden boy and anything he signs is sacred. Please look up Saul Alynsky and check out his "8 Rules".

As Ronald Reagan said, "government is not the solution, it's the problem". Obama Care is a government takeover. Obama is on record stating he would like to see employer (private) insurance phased out and moving to a single payer system. That would mean putting a private industry out of business. The early Americans fought for our independence from the British to be free of a government with too much power. it's as if we are moving from the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

Regarding a plan by the republicans, I want to hear something from them too. I would like the entire Obama Care plan to go away. And for the uninsured? Maybe some kind of 'insurance assistance' program that allows them to shop around for their own plan that fits their needs. It would cost less, not to mention take less people and less red tape to operate.

chuckiechan said:

I think what people are missing is this battle is all about the 40 million people who did not have health insurance for one reason or another, prior to Obamacare.

There are better ways to fix that than completely dismantling the existing system, and building a new federal system. Don't kid yourself. Full - on socialized, unionized medicine was the ultimate long term, goal, and the Democrats were willing use false
It's the Republicans fault for not doing anything about it when they had he numbers that led to Obamacare in the first place. So here we are, trying to construct a form of Obamacare that works.

There are only three payers: the patient/family, the employer, or the government
promises to screw the 320 million who were just fine to get there.

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chuckiechan said:

Sounds like she had Kaiser.

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Actually Kaiser these days (at least in my area) has pretty well coordinated care and services.

Health Net was the worst for my mom.

United Health care was responsible for my friends issues with delays in care. Nearly killed her.

But there were so many others,

year2late said:

It is not just about getting coverage. It was about the way insurance companies weaseled their way around actually authorizing the treatment you were do. Pre ACA I had to advocate for my mom. It seemed like a full time job at times. She was lucky enough to have a daughter that was quite tenacious and knew what was right medically, I have a friend that had to take a huge loan against her house to expedite treatment on her aggressive metastatic breast cancer. It took a lawyer and 6 months to finally get payment approved. She would have been dead if she hadn't gotten treatment in short order. That was pre ACA.

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Yes...Im aware there are many anecdotal accounts of horror stories before and after the ACA. I dont think anyone has suggested there shouldnt have been changes.

Visbek said:

OK, and....?

Since I have the advantage of being at a computer here's a graph for you to check out. Switching to costs per capita still doesn't make the US look very good.

So what you're saying is:

The US spends more, and covers fewer people, than nations with single payer / universal health care. Thanks for helping me make my point. :thumbs:



Did you not read what I wrote?

Health care is not a commodity like food or cars or houses. If you have a heart attack, you can't spend 30 minutes shopping around for the hospital with the cheapest emergency room. You will not do well if you tell the EMTs to take you to a hospital an extra 20 minutes away, because they charge less for X-rays. You can't get an angiogram in one hospital, then get transported to another to have a stent put in.

To expand on that: In the private insurance system, it's nearly impossible to figure out your costs. Sure, you can call a few MRI facilities -- if there is more than one in your area that takes your insurance, of course -- and hear different prices. But your insurer is paying part of the bill, and that can vary based on which facility you use.

Further: Sometimes you can choose, sometimes you can't. If you have a heart condition, you have the choice of a few medicines, and some may be generic. If you need chemotherapy, you can't pick and choose.

Or: Are you going to decline to get chemo, because surgery is cheaper?

Or: Am I going to use a worse doctor, because he's cheaper?

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You jump from position to position being aggressive. That is boring. In your graph you lump private and public costs together to prove your point. The point was, however, that you had said that the private costs were the reason for exaggerated cost. The graph is thus not helpful.
And yes! The public spending is probably higher per capita than in most other countries. So, if you want to criticise spending efficiency, it is the public sector doing the waste. This is not a surprise. It is always problematic to allow the public hand to produce a private good.

This is especially interesting to see in universal and single payer systems. The ones I know have never been pure systems. Take the UK. I never used the public services. That was far too slow, bureaucratic and awful. Similar in France and Germany. It also seems to be the case here in Spain, where I now live most of the time.

And you are absolutely right that I probably will not shop around for an emergency room, when I have cardiac arrest. But I regularly consult a specialist freind on the quality of medical facilities before engaging them and compare. So, like in life, you won't shop around for duck soup, when the mountain rangers save you with your first bite of a Mars bar.

But where you are really right is in your assumption that the costs to the taxpayer is probably too high and the results probably too limited. The government is not doing a good job.

NIMBY said:

The current screaming is coming from WITHIN the GOP as they know what will happen to them in 2018 with repeal but no REPLACE.

GOP liars have had 6 years to figure out a replace.

Leadership is a bitch, Mitch .

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LOL... the screaming you're hearing is the Left... and it's to be expected... it's about all you folks are good for.

You had your shot at healthcare legistlation a couple times. HillaryKare was killed by public opposition, and you folks rammed through ObamaKare despite the public not wanting it.

You passed ObamaKare without a single R vote, and with the state of Massachusetts sending in an R to replace Dead Kennedy's seat to stop the idiocy.

ObamaKare has been a mountain of lies, and economic HIV.

Correcting the mess will take time, but will get done. It took years to try to implement ObamaKare... it'll take about the same amount of time to cure the Demokrat Party's strain of HIV.

VanceMack said:

Yes...Im aware there are many anecdotal accounts of horror stories before and after the ACA. I dont think anyone has suggested there shouldnt have been changes.

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Actually...given the fact that there were no real attempts at changes in the 8 years prior......did you have reason to believe it was going to happen without a big mess?

What should have happened was to stop the back room wheeling and dealing and come up with a good plan for the citizens....

fmw said:

The right plan is no Obamacare at all and no involvement of government in the insurance business. Unfortunately, people aren't ready to understand that.

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You're right about people not understanding being sick and not being able to get any healthcare at all.
People do indeed have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea of dying because they can't afford healthcare in the wealthiest society in the world. Is that really a surprise to you?

If you don't understand their plight, then you are a sociopath.

VanceMack said:

Prior to passage of the ACA, the numbers range from 11-18% uninsured, depending on who's studioes you believe. Most of those were not uninsurable...they were simply uninsured. many of those uninsured were by economic choice. They chose to invest in tattoos and video games and cheetos and tobacco and any number of convenience items rather than investing in health care insurance. Choice.
That means 82-99% had somehow managed to figure out how to obtain health care. And MOST were actually quite satisfied with their coverage.
Was health care perfect? No. Some things should have been changed. Torte reform should still be imposed. Insurance companies SHOULD be forced to not drop clients based on legitimate healthcare needs. As for the uninsured, those that were unable to financially secure healthcare should have been placed on state/fed funded healthcare. We didnt need to blow up a system...we needed an 11-18% solution.
Ive heard it suggested that whatever system congress passed/passes/omposes, that first and foremost they and their immediate families should be subject to. Id go for that.

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I think we would sooner see Trump admit he was gay and in love with Perez Hilton before that would happen.

VanceMack said:

Yes...Im aware there are many anecdotal accounts of horror stories before and after the ACA. I dont think anyone has suggested there shouldnt have been changes.

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Then why didn't the Republicans make any changes? Outside Hillary and Obama with a Dem congress, the Republicans have done Jack and **** about healthcare costs or availability. Republicans like to bitch about the ACA, but haven't done anything to do better. Now they have their shot and if their solution is just to kick 20 million of insurance, you bet there will be a backlash for them come 2018 mid-terms and rightfully so.

Greenbeard said:

Repeal-and-delay acknowledges two facts:

1. Obamacare is better than no Obamacare
2. The GOP has no functional alternative to Obamacare

So it stays on the books.

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Except its not a fact that obamacare is better than no obamacare. Particularly in the minds of voters.

As perotista pointed out... polling shows more americans think Obamacare has hurt them than helped them.. and the vast majority think it has little or no effect on them.

Praxas said:

Then why didn't the Republicans make any changes? Outside Hillary and Obama with a Dem congress, the Republicans have done Jack and **** about healthcare costs or availability. Republicans like to bitch about the ACA, but haven't done anything to do better. Now they have their shot and if their solution is just to kick 20 million of insurance, you bet there will be a backlash for them come 2018 mid-terms and rightfully so.

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Actually the republicans have done a lot to reduce healthcare costs. especially over the last two decades the balanced budget act being a major player.

as far as accessibility to healthcare. The republicans are responsible for the single biggest increase in socialized medicine in thirty years... namely creating medicare Part D which gives access to medication for millions of seniors.