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Is Paul Ryan's description of the Obamacare-replacement, a good one?
Ryan made a number of points. A few of them:
* Fed govt will give a "tax credit". Was it only for people who don't get their insurance through their employer? Was it only for people who pay income taxes (barely half the U.S. population), and so can get their taxes reduced? Or was it a straight payment, regardless of whether you pay any income taxes?
* States will be in charge of crafting insurance policies, no the Fed govt. While there are still great concerns over the wisdom of government being involved in insurance at all, this devolvement to the states has at least one major advantage over Obamacare: The state devolvement makes it LEGAL. The U.S. Constitution forbids the Fed govt from running insurance and general health plans - a little fact conveniently ignored by the Obamacare pushers, and unexamined by the Supreme Court. Such activities are to be left for "the States and the people"... which is exactly what this devolvement does.
* Ryan gave an example of a hypothetical 40-person company that self-insures - pays through its own money pools for all the covered illnesses and injuries of its employees. He described a theoretical instance where 10% of the employees - four people - get treatable cancer and have expensive medical treatments for it. He pointed out that premiums from the other 36, must go much higher to pay for the four. He seemed to say that costs will go down under his state-devolvement plan, since the state can have a risk pool fund that can pay for such rare but expensive treatments.
My question on this point is, won't everybody in the state be tapping into those state funds, as they tap into insurance companies today? And so payments into those funds will have to be much larger, instead of the insurance premiums being much larger? I don't see how this plan makes costs come down. People are just paying into a different fund - but they still pay overall for ALL the treatments, which is no different from what we have had before. (Who else could possibly pay for those treatments? You got it - The People. There is no other source of money.)
* Presently, a person in line for a raise at his company, might refuse it because it lifts him out of the range for large Obamacare subsidies. And many companies are cutting back their employees' hours, because Obamacare demands that they start paying very high premiums for employees working over 35 hours/week (or whatever the limit is). Ryan described how such things will be gone on the new plan. He said he didn't want any disincentives for people to work more, advance more, improve their situation, try harder, innovate more etc. Sounds like a great plan, but I'm not clear on how he intends to make it happen. More details needed here.
I'm still a long way away from approving this new plan. But it's sounding better than it did. Still needs to be taken farther away from the Federal govt, but this is a step in the right direction at least.
My short answer ... NO. And for those who don't know, I am absolutely NO Obamacare fan.
To start .. the ACA must be completely repealed before anything else goes into effect, otherwise you only have a modified ACA and there are a lot of issues inherent in that approach that we cannot even begin to see. The ACA is just way too unwieldy to deal with - no one even understands all of it. And it is not working - it is sinking on its own and very rapidly.
We need to start from scratch and agree first on the stated objectives. This patch job is criminal - and worse than just keeping the ACA as it was (minus the taxes/penalties/mandate for all to have a plan) and letting nature take its course with it.
No more mandates. Only Dems/Libs would be unhappy about this.
Don't take the evilcart's bait.
It is not bait, it is a real question but clearly you can't provide even one vaguely close example.
I put the question to you again Ollie.
You opened this thread attacking socialized healthcare.
I asked you to provide just one example of a free market system...
again, it does not have to be perfect, it does not have to be cheap, it does not have to be glowingly nice, special or anything.
JUST one example, any country in the whole world, that has a free market system.
it is not bait it is simple. You say socialized is broken and no good, i say show me something that is not socialized and vaguely works...
The risk pool is the same as it was under ACA so the total cost has to be the same as it was under ACA. Ryan's plan has the government subsidizing less, ergo, the plan holder has to make up the difference to cover the cost. So, no, it is not a better plan.
Ryan is just rearranging the deck chairs without doing anything about the sinking ship. That ship is the high cost of healthcare. Somebody has to pay that cost - either the consumer pays with deductibles and premiums, or the government pays with subsidies, which are ultimately paid by all of us with taxes. It is costing all of us the same either way. The total cost has to come down and private insurance has no incentive to lower the total cost of healthcare.
Do you ever get one cogent thought entering your head? What drugs does AARP sell to gullible seniors?
"AARP® Prescription Discounts provided by OptumRx is a prescription discount program that offers free exclusive discounts to AARP members, their spouses, and dependents including children, grandchildren and stepchildren on prescriptions. With AARP Prescription Discounts, you can save an average of 61%* on FDA-approved generic, brand name, or specialty drugs, not covered by your current prescription insurance or Medicare Part D plan. The program is accepted at 66,000 participating pharmacies in the United States and its territories or through our mail service provider."
I you would do a little research yourself you wouldn't make such FOOL of yoreslf!
What a maroon, Paul Ryan says insurance can't work if healthy must pay more to subsidize the sick. But this is exactly what happens in every employer plan. This is very literally the definition of health insurance... or any insurance...
This plan doesn't address the cost of healthcare (something conservatives mention extensively was a failure of the ACA), and all it does is move the subsidies and penalties around while stripping the poor of Medicaid.
This is not what Trump promised the people and it for sure isn't what Republicans or Democrats want.
Looks like Trump does not really care about his supporters the way he claimed he did.
Trumpcare will hurt his supporters a lot more and will hurt red states more than blue ones too. Mostly if you are older, poorer or just not earning much you will lose. And Trump has already come out and said this is a great bill......
Oh, the puppet of big pharma and the insurance companies who gets his health insurance paid for by the tax payers talking about how Joe Sixpack would be better off being ripped off by big pharma and Aetna.
Maybe you must be falling asleep during the last 8 years. Pharma did the best. I know I invested in biotech stocks and the returns were outstanding.
The risk pool is the same as it was under ACA so the total cost has to be the same as it was under ACA. Ryan's plan has the government subsidizing less, ergo, the plan holder has to make up the difference to cover the cost. So, no, it is not a better plan.
Ryan is just rearranging the deck chairs without doing anything about the sinking ship. That ship is the high cost of healthcare. Somebody has to pay that cost - either the consumer pays with deductibles and premiums, or the government pays with subsidies, which are ultimately paid by all of us with taxes. It is costing all of us the same either way. The total cost has to come down and private insurance has no incentive to lower the total cost of healthcare.
I agree with the above and especially agree with the bold.
I think it is a worse plan for the consumer and a better plan for the insurance companies because they stand to make much more money off of this plan versus what they were making with Obamacare.
But, I want them to hurry up and implement it so we can see how much worse for us consumers it will be.
The whole HSA think is just a joke IMO for most Americans who cannot afford to put money into an HSA. The new plans won't cover preventable care like ACA where people at least would go to the doctor every year who normally wouldn't because they didn't have to pay anything. People got mammograms and women got more routine pap smears and better access to birth control. Since the bill also includes "defunding PP" (which is stupid IMO) that will mean much less access to female health clinics to get these services done at a cheap rate since most Americans, I doubt even know what HSA stands for.
...
Insurance used to be for emergency purposes but now it's about checkups.
If someone takes a prescription on a regular basis, say, for blood pressure or diabetes or high cholesterol, they usually have to to see the doctor annually in order to get the prescription refilled, else most doctors won't refill the prescription. This causes people to visit doctors even if they don't want to and even if their symptoms didn't change.
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TrumpCare set to hurt Trump voters the most!
