Real Affordable Healthcare Can Be Accomplished

Fixing the healthcare cost situation has to start with fixing the healthcare provider side of the problem.

Providers can't even start to lower prices until the the revenue stream from the government is fixed. Obamacare was designed to stifle the Medicare flow and pay pennies on the dollar for Medicaid reimbursements. The hospitals, who have to meet their payrolls, were forced to raise prices to insure an adequate percentage of return. The insurance companies, the private side of accounts receivables, were stuck with Obamacare policies which made them have to overpay for the same services that the government was underpaying for. Hospital census flow revenue was always stabilized by Medicare. Now hospitals are trying to do it by overcharging.

The Democrats knew from the very start that Obamacare would put extreme stress on hospitals that rely mostly on government payment flow. Rural hospitals in particular, as much of their inpatient census flow comes by way of Medicare. Scott Cohen, a Democratic Congressman from Tennessee, was even concerned about the revenue flow for his high Medicaid driven urban hospitals in Tennessee, so he and a few of his buddies created Medicaid overrides for their districts and stuck it in the original Obamacare legislation. Yep, they knew it wouldn't work right from the start !!!

The situation can be fixed, but it will take a complete repeal of Obamacare and a bi-partisan agreement that healthcare is one topic that the politicians should just fix so that it can actually work well for the entire population.

Easier said than done, but real affordable healthcare can be accomplished.

 

The only way to fix healthcare in such a way there are no gaps is a single payer system in which the bulk of the tax falls directly on business, but that will never happen.

 

There is absolutely NO REASON that Obamacare has to be repealed...in order to obtain "real affordable healthcare"...although Republican politicians have pretty much sold their supporters on that fallacy.

In any case, the Republicans are the very last people on the planet to be taking on the job of putting into place Affordable Healthcare for everyone. They have no aptitude for the job; they don't really want the job; and their focus seems to be in exactly the opposite direction.

If a true affordable healthcare solution is obtained...it will almost certainly be obtained by the Democrats. I'm not a Democrat, but I can see the political realities...and the "political realities" scream that the Republicans are NEVER going to come close to a true affordable healthcare solution.

 

SEVEN YEARS the do-nothing obstructionist party had vote after vote to repeal. Now that the GOP controls everything, we can all see that the emperor is NAKED.
THEY HAVE NO PLAN.
SEVEN YEARS.
Sad.
Losers.

 

In case you haven't noticed, there are many counties in at least 9 states that will lose their last and only healthcare provider at the end of 2017.

 

Uh huh.

And if Obamacare were fixed...they might GAIN several healthcare providers.

There is no need to repeal it...except for the Republican politicians who have been promising to do it for 7 1/2 years...and who promised to do it immediately if voted into power.

The Republicans now rule the House of Representatives...the Senate...the White House...the governorships of a vast majority of the states...the state houses of a vast majority of the states...soon the SCOTUS...

...and as for the promise to repeal Obamacare...

...how is that working out?

 

VA healthcare is the most expensive in the US.. It runs 36 to 46% higher than Medicare of private healthcare... VA hospitals should be closed or sold off to private entities and veterans should have single payer private delivery healthcare... anywhere they want to go.

 

Dems next move will be single payer. That was the plan all along. At 20 trillion in debt they will probably be able to double that in less than 4 years.

 

Tri-Care does allow for private sector care and many feel that it is a better option.

And one of the untold secrets of the VA is that many of the workers there are folks who messed up in the private sector. Failed drug screens, committed inventory thefts, were on probation for patient mistreatment, and in some cases even surgically cut off the wrong limb.

In other words, risk management sent them packing.

 

Bull. you don't know what you are talking about. Guess you have never heard of National Health Service Corps.

Doctors with bad records who have lost their license go to Florida.

Tricare is OK.. just another layer of administrative costs.

 

Proof that if you give chimps keyboards, eventually they can type sentences.
Typical of the GOP playbook - when you have nothing to support your position, resort to infantile personal attacks.

 

That is fake news ! It's name is obamacare it is the greatest bill ever created , to say otherwise would only mean your a racist and you hate women and wanderers who happen to cross into this country .

 

Where the governor was head of an insurance company that ripped off medicare for record amounts.

 

Yeah.. I worked for him.. What a nightmare.

 

Make Medicare universal.

Easy fix with a system that already works well.

 

And you know this from watching movies? LOL

 

No combat infantry badge for me... the closest was Panama.

 

Then can it on attacking others ....you don't know what you are talking about

 

I concur, reps could not do it if their life depended on it and dems can't do it either.

 

Wait, from personal experience Medicaid doesn't pay pennies on the dollar to hospitals.

I had Medicaid though United Healthcare, and I had to go to the hospital in 2014. When I later got my healthcare statement it said that my plan had paid $330,000/out of $330,000. So it paid the bill in full.

So much for Medicaid stiffing the hospitals.

 

Given how badly Republicans screwed up the healthcare bill, it's highly likely that some Republicans will start moving to single payer too. It's an opportunity for Democrats since Trump isn't ideological; he's a "whatever works" kind of guy.

Someday we may look back and think of Paul Ryan as the father of US single payer healthcare.

 

Why not Medicaid? It's cheaper.

 

If that were to happen...I would be delighted. I could not care less about who gets the credit. What I want is universal, affordable healthcare coverage...preferably a single payer system.

I hope you are right, Mike...that the Republicans work to get us to where we have to be on this issue.

 

That sounds nice, but while it is true that the Donald isn't ideological (better said as having no clue) - Ryan and many others ARE very ideological. They will oppose anything that isn't pure "free market", I fear.

 

Well here's the situation Ryan is in:

He had a chance to reform health care along free market principles and get rid of Obamacare and totally flubbed it. Meanwhile, the Obamacare death spiral proceeds apace. What is going to be the Congressional Republican reaction this November and December when the Obamacare plan premiums and deductibles start coming in during open enrollment for 2018 and there are pockets of counties across the country where there is no affordable healthcare on the exchanges (other than Medicaid)? Obamacare cost the Democrats their majority and have relegated them to a coastal party of far left cranks. Healthcare is now in the Republicans court and could do the same thing.