Republicans surrender to 'ObamaCare'

Ya did good. We have deep-running, self-reinforcing problems in our national politics that sustain this terrible state of affairs.

 

Probably never. I think they are slowly turning health insurance back to the insurance industry.

 

Republicans came very close to slashing coverage for tens of millions of Americans. That underscored the vast chasm between trumptalk and reality.

The Trump regime has done nothing to improve the egregiously unacceptable:

The U.S. spends more on health care than any other wealthy country. Yet, it ranks dead last compared with 10 others overall as well as for affordability, equity and health care outcomes (it ranked next to last for administrative efficiency). A report from The Commonwealth Fund shows that reducing the income gap between high and low earners plays a significant role in providing high quality, equally accessible health care.

Despite making meaningful progress to insure millions of people under The Affordable Care Act, the U.S. health system costs more and performs worse than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, based on 72 criteria in five categories The Commonwealth Fund reviewed.

“Other countries have much better primary care than the U.S., invest more in primary care physicians than in specialists and have health systems that are more equitable,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of The Commonwealth Fund, during a teleconference with reporters. “In no other country does income inequality so profoundly limit access to care as it does here.”

The U.S. has ranked at the bottom of similar reports since 2004. Some of these differences come from the unique structure of the U.S. health system, Blumenthal said. We are the only country among those surveyed that does not offer some type of universal coverage.

Health care spending has grown faster in the U.S. than elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean better performance...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...anks-worst-among-wealthy-countries-2017-08-01​

 

I know. It's their ideology to leave everything to the greedy corporate and Wall Street vultures and pretend that they do everything best, even though they have obviously failed miserably so far to keep health care costs affordable. That is a problem resting on both the corporate providers and the corporate insurers. Same thing in pharmaceuticals. They are all torn between serving patients and serving share holders. They also use that money they accumulate from overly high prices to pay for politicians and propaganda to maintain this sick system.

 

Isn't that what Obama promised? Why do you blame Trump, and not the man who created the charade to begin with?

What Trump did accomplish was to repeal the individual mandate, and every citizen of the US should be thankful for it; and were it not for McCain, he would have repealed a lot more as well. One thing is certain, the more the Federal Government gets involved in healthcare, the more expensive it will get.

 

I correctly note what Trump, who has been president for 20 months, had promised, and, in stark contrast to that, the reality: The U.S. spends more on health care than any other wealthy country. Yet, it ranks dead last compared with 10 others overall.

It you need to praise your messiah for that, I can't see the reason to be worshipful.

 

It is the vested interests that feed off the system and the mindless ideologues who support it that perpetuates the US healthcare system being inferior to those of all other advanced nations at twice the cost.

 

So you acknowledge that ObamaCare was, in reality, a total failure, yet you blame Trump for it? Why do you blame Trump for Obama's failure?

 

Obama and the democrats won this battle for socialism. Once people start getting something for free it's impossible to take it from them. Score one for the bad guys.

 

Do you see the oxymoron here?

 

ObamaCare was a vast improvement in extending coverage to 20 million previously uninsured Americans whose bloated medical bills were routinely dumped on the taxpayer, and there is obviously enormous support for keeping many of its provisions - dependents covered to age 26, prohibition of pre-existing exclusions, etc., but it was from the start an inadequate accommodation to the disastrous system in the US, although it enjoys widespread support:

Why do you keep mewling about "blame" and dwelling on the past?

Please try to focus on the current unacceptable plight and explain what Trump and the Republican-run House and the Republican-run Senate are doing to honor his vow to institute "something terrific!" that "covers everybody!" at "lower cost!"

Will he revert to his enthusiasm for the far more cost efficient, inclusive paradigm provided by all advanced nations?

Trump had expressed his enthusiastic support for universal health care repeatedly:

• "If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s all over. ... I believe in universal healthcare!" Trump told CNN’s Larry King in October 1999.

• "I would put forth a comprehensive health care program and fund it with an increase in corporate taxes, " Trump told The Advocate in February 2000.

• "The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than America. … We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing," Trump writes in his 2000 book The America We Deserve.​

 

My wife went back to forty hours a week at the health marketplace where they service the applications for the ACA..They had been cut to thirty-two hours a week after Trump tried to destroy the ACA..

 

Yes, but it is not so simple
If i go to the ER, the insurance company has negotiated significantly lower prices

If joe blow unisured goes to the ER, his bill is at full retail price. And so if “ we “ pay the bill, we pay more than if we just gave joe medicare for all coverage

 

Obamacare is like a pinecone shoved way up your rectum. You're in a bit of a pickle in that situation, because of the barbs it's very difficult to get back out.

And the bloke who shoved it up there knew that and indeed picked the pine cone with the grippiest barbs.

 

Exactly true. The uninsured are charged somewhere between four and five times what the insurance company pays for the exact same treatment. Been there in the old days when you could not get insurance for preexisting conditions. Otherwise known as the good old days which, given the opportunity, the Republicans are going to bring back

 

No. Suggest you look up the definition of " oxymoron"

 

Well let's look at that.

"The issue isn't medical care for everyone the issue is how the country is going to do it in an efficient manner."

Providing medical care to everyone in an efficient manner is a perfect oxymoron. You can't efficiently provide healthcare to everyone. You can only provide it in a way that degrades other parts of the economy. Nothing efficient about that.

 

Your ideological dogma is discredited by the empirical reality of all the advanced nations that provide quality coverage for all at about half the amount the US spends for inferior results.

 

Case in point. Obamacare made the cost of healthcare care go up for the masses to provide free or subsidized healthcare to some. What's efficient about that!

 

It took Trump to make Obamacare popular. Without Trump the majority of Americans would still be against it. But that's politics. Here are the polls from the Obama era by year.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health_care_plan-1130.html

Since it inception until Trump, Obamacare had been an albatross around the democrats neck. Now, today, it seems Trump is the albatross around the republicans neck.

Thanks to Trump and his AHCA which was an aberration, close to being asinine and definitely not terrific, the ACA seems here to stay. Here is the latest I found on it.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/376210-poll-obamacare-favorability-reaches-all-time-high

I do think without Trump, the ACA was headed for the trash heap of history as the Obama era was indicating. But it also shows, politics and political opinion can turn on a dime. Personally, I was against the ACA, I was also against the AHCA. I'm still against the ACA, but it will do for the time being. It's has basically become a non-issue with me. No effect on how I vote at all whereas in the Obama era, the ACA did affect my vote. Now we are living in a different era, so be it.

 

Extending coverage to 20,000,000 Americans who had been uninsured, eliminating pre-existing exclusions, and extending dependent coverage to age 26 are among the provisions of the ACA that have been embraced by the People, but given its failure to confront rising costs, it was a temporary accommodation at best. As you correctly note, only Trump, with his lies about "something terrific!" that "covers everybody!" at "less cost!" could have made the ACA permanent. It looks as if Trump®Care is the plight of the US for the foreseeable future. He now owns it as assuredly as his effusive promises regarding renewing the nation's infrastructure have made it his.

 

The cost of healthcare had been soaring for years before the ACA, and continued the climb afterwards. The significant difference in terms of cost is that you no longer had 20,000,000 uninsured Americans routinely seeking care in hospital emergency rooms and those bloated cost dumped on the taxpayer.

Returning to current issues, how is Trump's promised "something terrific!" that covers "everybody!" at "less cost!" coming along?

 

Issue you responded to was if healthcare for all could be done efficiently. Now even you see no it cant

 

I totally forgot Trump's promise on the infrastructure. That should be something both parties can come together on. At least I think so, but in today's polarized and ultra partisan atmosphere, I'm not so sure.

Everything else, you're right on.

 

You forgot his quote that "nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated... "