OBAMA/TRUMPCARE MEGATHREAD

[StrangeSox]

Jimmy Kimmel on Sen. Cassidy lying right to his face about health care.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jimmy-...th-care-n802896

 

 

[StrangeSox]

GOP senators are rushing to pass Graham-Cassidy. We asked 9 to explain what it does.

 

[Brian]

If they want to use the Thelma & Louise comparison, I'd say this is more like we are getting f*cked by Brad Pitt and robbed.

[StrangeSox]

they might want to take a look at who the driver would be in that analogy given that one party keeps openly and loudly talking about deliberately sabotaging the health care markets.

 

I like Inhofe's argument that cutting billions of dollars in funding will just somehow magically be made better via block granting it to the states, as if that somehow regenerates billions of dollars. Pure ideology [or bad faith bulls*** and he's more than happy to kill thousands of Americans a year and bankrupt many more].

Edited September 20, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

 

at least it's honest. gotta blow up health care despite having many, many reasons not to because we campaigned on this for years.

[Balta1701]

Am I wrong to be surprised that every time they come back with a new bill, it is somehow worse than the previous bill that everyone found to be evil and cruel?

Evil and Cruel is what every Republican other than Donald Trump has campaigned on since 2009. The wrong people are getting covered. Health Care is a privilege, not a right. Sure we will take away your health insurance backup plan, but we'll also take it away from those undeserving blah people.

 

This has been their platform every single election. They will cut health insurance costs by reducing the things health insurance covers and making sure expensive people receive no coverage unless they are rich enough to pay for it on their own.

[LittleHurt05]

Evil and Cruel is what every Republican other than Donald Trump has campaigned on since 2009. The wrong people are getting covered. Health Care is a privilege, not a right. Sure we will take away your health insurance backup plan, but we'll also take it away from those undeserving blah people.

 

This has been their platform every single election. They will cut health insurance costs by reducing the things health insurance covers and making sure expensive people receive no coverage unless they are rich enough to pay for it on their own.

 

 

Evil and cruel is what every Democrat has campaigned for on insurance since 2009. Health care is a right for the poor and the rich. But if you are in the middle of that group, you better work for one of our friends large corporations or you will lose most of your coverage and doctors access, but premiums will still skyrocket.

 

[StrangeSox]

I've got some exciting news for you about Bernie Sanders, friend!

 

 

(millions of more people have coverage under ACA, and the tens of millions who already had coverage have much better protections)

[illinilaw08]

Evil and cruel is what every Democrat has campaigned for on insurance since 2009. Health care is a right for the poor and the rich. But if you are in the middle of that group, you better work for one of our friends large corporations or you will lose most of your coverage and doctors access, but premiums will still skyrocket.

 

Serious question - what do any of the Republican plans do for you? Maybe you can get catastrophe coverage, so you pay lower premiums, but less is covered? Or am I missing something?

 

I don't think you will find many people in this forum who think that the ACA is perfect. I think you will find a lot of people in this forum that think government's involvement in health care should be to expand access and reduce cost. Rather than working to fix the ACA, Republicans have continually pushed policies over the last year that will reduce the number of people covered, and will not lower the cost of coverage.

[Balta1701]

Serious question - what do any of the Republican plans do for you? Maybe you can get catastrophe coverage, so you pay lower premiums, but less is covered? Or am I missing something?

 

I don't think you will find many people in this forum who think that the ACA is perfect. I think you will find a lot of people in this forum that think government's involvement in health care should be to expand access and reduce cost. Rather than working to fix the ACA, Republicans have continually pushed policies over the last year that will reduce the number of people covered, and will not lower the cost of coverage.

They take us back to 2009 in preexisting conditions except with less money for Medicaid. Uniformly. They throw in other things like "state waivers" to allow states to take the blame for which things are covered and which aren't, but the basic premise is that of 2009. If you get sick, you better be wealthy enough to deal with it, if you're not it's your own fault and you will be a person the system no longer deals with, and that's how we will control costs.

[LittleHurt05]

Serious question - what do any of the Republican plans do for you? Maybe you can get catastrophe coverage, so you pay lower premiums, but less is covered? Or am I missing something?

 

I don't think you will find many people in this forum who think that the ACA is perfect. I think you will find a lot of people in this forum that think government's involvement in health care should be to expand access and reduce cost. Rather than working to fix the ACA, Republicans have continually pushed policies over the last year that will reduce the number of people covered, and will not lower the cost of coverage.

 

I'm not supporting any of the current Republican plans. I'm arguing against all these blanket statements that Republicans are out to only help their friends and kill everyone else while Democrats care about the health of every American from the bottom of their heart.

 

No, the ACA helped their poor constituents and their rich friends, while taking away health benefits and access from many of the people in the middle and small businesses. And how many workers had hours cut or lost their jobs due to the ACA.

 

But it's all about which party is right, not what the right thing to do is.

[Balta1701]

I'm not supporting any of the current Republican plans. I'm arguing against all these blanket statements that Republicans are out to only help their friends and kill everyone else while Democrats care about the health of every American from the bottom of their heart.

 

No, the ACA helped their poor constituents and their rich friends, while taking away health benefits and access from many of the people in the middle and small businesses. And how many workers had hours cut or lost their jobs due to the ACA.

 

But it's all about which party is right, not what the right thing to do is.

A new study further undercuts a major claim by critics of the Affordable Care Act, who contended that the law would encourage companies to slash full-time workers' hours and shift them into part-time work in order to avoid having to offer them health insurance.

The research "found little evidence that the ACA had caused increases in part-time employment as of 2015," according to a summary of the findings published in the journal Health Affairs on Tuesday.

 

"We can say with a large degree of confidence that there is nothing we can see nationwide when we look at the whole workforce" that would support a claim that the so-called employer mandate or other Obamacare features have led to increases in part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs, said Kosali Simon, a professor at Indiana University, and a co-author of the report.

 

Simon noted that even the slight shifts to part-time employment from full-time jobs — of just about 0.5 percent from 2013 to 2015 — in two subgroups could not be attributed to the Obamacare employer mandate. Those subgroups are people with no more than a high school degree, and workers between the age of 60 and 64.

 

She said those subgroups' slight shift to part-time work at the expense of full-time hours is associated more with them responding to the ACA's offer of subsidies to buy health insurance through Obamacare exchanges, which are tied to income levels, as well as to the increased availability of Medicaid benefits for poor adults.

So yes, a couple groups showed small shifts towards more part time work, but those same groups also were groups that increased their income subsidies by shifting that way, leaving them basically even of perhaps better off if they were on Medicaid.

Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said that although there have "been anecdotes about employers shifting workers to part-time status to avoid offering them health insurance," the Health Affairs study and prior research suggests that those anecdotes don't represent a general trend.

 

"There doesn't appear to be any substantial changes in the labor market as a result of Obamacare," Levitt said. "The anecdotes are real, but I think it's just not happening in large numbers."

[illinilaw08]

I'm not supporting any of the current Republican plans. I'm arguing against all these blanket statements that Republicans are out to only help their friends and kill everyone else while Democrats care about the health of every American from the bottom of their heart.

 

No, the ACA helped their poor constituents and their rich friends, while taking away health benefits and access from many of the people in the middle and small businesses. And how many workers had hours cut or lost their jobs due to the ACA.

 

But it's all about which party is right, not what the right thing to do is.

 

I don't think the bolded is true. For one thing, the ACA has plenty of tax increases to the wealthy - tax increases that every R plan attempts to roll back. The ACA is many things, but it is not a giveaway to the rich. And to the extent that the insurance companies like it, that's simply because the Ds didn't have the political capital to push for a real single payor system.

 

For another, it's simply too broad. I acknowledge that there's an income level that saw their premiums go up under the ACA. But you can't possibly say with a straight face that there aren't middle income, and small businesses who benefitted from the pre-existing condition ban, or letting their kids stay on their health plan until 25, or the elimination of lifetime caps.

 

Healthy, young, and middle income (who didn't get coverage through their employers) were those that lost under the ACA - those who had the good fortune to not need to consume healthcare. Because the quality of the healthcare doesn't really matter when you don't use it except in the event of a catastrophe.

 

[LittleHurt05]

I don't think the bolded is true. For one thing, the ACA has plenty of tax increases to the wealthy - tax increases that every R plan attempts to roll back. The ACA is many things, but it is not a giveaway to the rich. And to the extent that the insurance companies like it, that's simply because the Ds didn't have the political capital to push for a real single payor system.

 

For another, it's simply too broad. I acknowledge that there's an income level that saw their premiums go up under the ACA. But you can't possibly say with a straight face that there aren't middle income, and small businesses who benefitted from the pre-existing condition ban, or letting their kids stay on their health plan until 25, or the elimination of lifetime caps.

 

Healthy, young, and middle income (who didn't get coverage through their employers) were those that lost under the ACA - those who had the good fortune to not need to consume healthcare. Because the quality of the healthcare doesn't really matter when you don't use it except in the event of a catastrophe.

 

The bolded is part of the point I was making. Many smaller insurance companies were forced to close due to the ACA requirements, which leads to the larger companies profiting more and more. And now they are freely able to restrict their policies to different users, that aren't part of their large corporate customer group plans. Blue Cross cut off the majority of their network to individual buyers, and there aren't really any other choices in the Chicago area.

 

I understand your point about the healthy and the young, I guess somebody always has to lose, but middle income people without employee coverage did use health care in the past, now they are the ones who have had it taken away and are have very little options, which isn't fair.

[Jerksticks]

The bolded is part of the point I was making. Many smaller insurance companies were forced to close due to the ACA requirements, which leads to the larger companies profiting more and more. And now they are freely able to restrict their policies to different users, that aren't part of their large corporate customer group plans. Blue Cross cut off the majority of their network to individual buyers, and there aren't really any other choices in the Chicago area.

 

I understand your point about the healthy and the young, I guess somebody always has to lose, but middle income people without employee coverage did use health care in the past, now they are the ones who have had it taken away and are have very little options, which isn't fair.

 

Yes anybody who does contract work and isn't making a killing is getting hit hard. And of course the millions of new people every year who can only get contract work because employers want less employees than ever.

 

And what seems like billion dollar deductibles hurts too.

[Soxbadger]

Littlehurt and Jerksticks,

 

Do you not see the overarching problem here? I bet a crazy higher percentage of Americans want the following:

 

Better insurance at a lower cost.

 

The goal of Obamacare was to deliver that, but somehow it isnt working. The worst part, is the solution is relatively simple. The US govt could easily fix Obamacare, could easily pass laws that would make the majority of Americans happy. But for some reason it wont.

 

Irrespective of the D or R, why are we all fighting each other when most of us all want the same thing?

 

Everyone knows that the new Republican plan will be worse for the majority of people. Its not going to have cheaper insurance, its not going to be better and its not going to cover more people. Yet many in our country openly encourage it for unexplained reasons.

 

There is plenty of money to be made in the insurance game even if they were to do "outrageous" things like 1) cap the amount your premium can increase every year as long as you consistently have had coverage, 2) provide access for independent contractors to competitive insurance plans, 3) ban lifetime caps, 4) ban preexisting conditions as long as you have had consistent coverage. and 5) provide coverage for those who cannot afford it.

 

A lot of the fundamental flaws arent in the insurance, it is in companies bending rules to avoid calling their worker an "employee." Lets say on average I speak to a business a week about how they can attempt to misclassify their employees as independent contractors. Under the law of IL, pretty much every worker should be an employee. But the owners dont want to pay things like "workmans comp" or "overtime" or "insurance" or "withholding taxes" or anything that hurts their how much money they are making. Its not because their company cant afford it, its because they want to make more money for themselves. In my entire career as an attorney, I have had 0 clients/consultations where following the rules would cause the business to go under. Yet weekly I get people who are trying to bend things to their advantage.

 

Now there is no way to stop people from bending rules, no way to stop people who can afford it from paying people who know how to bend rules, but what we can do is put in place a system where it gives regular people some minimum level of benefits.

 

Maybe that is too crazy, maybe that is a way out there suggestion. I dont really know. But unless we all start working together its going to get worse.

 

Obviously I have no way of seeing what the Republican bill is, but I can tell a s*** show from a mile away. When the best thing that are said about something are the equivalent of "We said wed do something so we have to do it" or "If your car is going over a cliff you get in any car you can find" you know its going to be horrendous.

 

I mean personally, if my choice is a) go over a cliff and die instantly or b) get in a car where Im going to be tortured for the rest of my life as well as anyone I ever care about with no chance of escape, Im picking A.

 

But thats just me.

 

[StrangeSox]

They are very blatantly trying to buy off Murkowski

http://ijr.com/2017/09/979983-republicans-...alth-care-bill/

 

 

now why wouldn't other on the fence R's demand the same?

Edited September 21, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Since the ACA went into effect, the open enrollment period for signing up with a health care insurance provider started on Nov 1 and ended on Jan 31 of the following year -- a 3-month period. This year, the open enrollment period starts Nov 1 and ends Dec 15.

The Trump administration has reduced the open enrollment period by 50%. The administration has also cut the ACA advertising budget by 90%, meaning the only way people are likely to hear about the shorter enrollment window is by word of mouth.

[RockRaines]

Once again, anyone who votes for this bill is either an idiot or an asshole.

 

And it should infuriate every single person in the country that instead of fixing healthcare, our politicians are ok with playing games with the topic for either party-politics or flat our ignorance.

Edited September 22, 2017 by RockRaines

[LittleHurt05]

Littlehurt and Jerksticks,

 

Do you not see the overarching problem here? I bet a crazy higher percentage of Americans want the following:

 

Better insurance at a lower cost.

 

The goal of Obamacare was to deliver that, but somehow it isnt working. The worst part, is the solution is relatively simple. The US govt could easily fix Obamacare, could easily pass laws that would make the majority of Americans happy. But for some reason it wont.

 

Irrespective of the D or R, why are we all fighting each other when most of us all want the same thing?

 

Everyone knows that the new Republican plan will be worse for the majority of people. Its not going to have cheaper insurance, its not going to be better and its not going to cover more people. Yet many in our country openly encourage it for unexplained reasons.

 

There is plenty of money to be made in the insurance game even if they were to do "outrageous" things like 1) cap the amount your premium can increase every year as long as you consistently have had coverage, 2) provide access for independent contractors to competitive insurance plans, 3) ban lifetime caps, 4) ban preexisting conditions as long as you have had consistent coverage. and 5) provide coverage for those who cannot afford it.

 

A lot of the fundamental flaws arent in the insurance, it is in companies bending rules to avoid calling their worker an "employee." Lets say on average I speak to a business a week about how they can attempt to misclassify their employees as independent contractors. Under the law of IL, pretty much every worker should be an employee. But the owners dont want to pay things like "workmans comp" or "overtime" or "insurance" or "withholding taxes" or anything that hurts their how much money they are making. Its not because their company cant afford it, its because they want to make more money for themselves. In my entire career as an attorney, I have had 0 clients/consultations where following the rules would cause the business to go under. Yet weekly I get people who are trying to bend things to their advantage.

 

Now there is no way to stop people from bending rules, no way to stop people who can afford it from paying people who know how to bend rules, but what we can do is put in place a system where it gives regular people some minimum level of benefits.

 

Maybe that is too crazy, maybe that is a way out there suggestion. I dont really know. But unless we all start working together its going to get worse.

 

Obviously I have no way of seeing what the Republican bill is, but I can tell a s*** show from a mile away. When the best thing that are said about something are the equivalent of "We said wed do something so we have to do it" or "If your car is going over a cliff you get in any car you can find" you know its going to be horrendous.

 

I mean personally, if my choice is a) go over a cliff and die instantly or b) get in a car where Im going to be tortured for the rest of my life as well as anyone I ever care about with no chance of escape, Im picking A.

 

But thats just me.

 

Anyone with even a hint of business acumen would have known that companies would do that. But it never mattered, because it's not about the people. It's about votes and filling your friends' pockets.

 

[illinilaw08]

Anyone with even a hint of business acumen would have known that companies would do that. But it never mattered, because it's not about the people. It's about votes and filling your friends' pockets.

 

I think that's a true statement about every R repeal bill. I think you would find a lot of people who would say the ACA was providing access to healthcare to more people.

[StrangeSox]

Tens of millions of more people have been covered thanks to the ACA, and people who were already covered had their plans strengthened through things like elimination of lifetime caps and the requirement of coverage of essential health benefits.

 

There were definitely losers of the ACA policy, and LH seems to have fallen into that. On the whole, many more people were helped than were hurt, and crafting good public health policy to benefit people has been a Democratic goal for decades. The ACA can definitely be improved upon, and all Democrats recognize that.

 

The other party is making every attempt they possibly can to throw tens of millions off of insurance and gut patient protections and public health funding. There is no equivalency here. Maybe you don't like what the Democrats are offering, but the Republicans have never even pretended to offer something that would actually improve healthcare in this country. If expanding public health policy so that more people get health care at affordable prices wins Democrats votes, then more power to them. "Doing good things that people like" should win you elections. Republicans are instead hyperfocused on passing a bill that has sub-20% approval and even they admit is horrible policy that they don't like and have no good reason to vote for beyond "we campaigned for years on repealing Obamacare."

Edited September 22, 2017 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

Tens of millions of more people have been covered thanks to the ACA, and people who were already covered had their plans strengthened through things like elimination of lifetime caps and the requirement of coverage of essential health benefits.

 

There were definitely losers of the ACA policy, and LH seems to have fallen into that. On the whole, many more people were helped than were hurt, and crafting good public health policy to benefit people has been a Democratic goal for decades. The ACA can definitely be improved upon, and all Democrats recognize that.

 

The other party is making every attempt they possibly can to throw tens of millions off of insurance and gut patient protections and public health funding. There is no equivalency here. Maybe you don't like what the Democrats are offering, but the Republicans have never even pretended to offer something that would actually improve healthcare in this country. If expanding public health policy so that more people get health care at affordable prices wins Democrats votes, then more power to them. "Doing good things that people like" should win you elections. Republicans are instead hyperfocused on passing a bill that has sub-20% approval and even they admit is horrible policy that they don't like and have no good reason to vote for beyond "we campaigned for years on repealing Obamacare."

The major problem I see with most of the complaints about costs or losses of choice is that the plans that did go away overwhelmingly had huge holes in them. That is one thing the ACA did that left fewer people with available coverage - requiring plans that actually covered stuff. t99% of the people on a plan that had a giant gaping hole for coverage of some particular issue would not need coverage for that issue and would be fine with that cheaper plan, but 1% of them would be ruined if they came down with that issue. If you personally weren't that person, then you're fine with the cheaper plan, but that's not "insurance", it's luck. That's where losers were created - costs went up and choices did go down in parts of the individual market because you can no longer offer a cheaper plan where people gamble on what diseases they won't get - you have to sell insurance plans that have insurance in them.

 

I'd wait for an argument about what we should do with policies that don't cover a syndrome and then we have people with those policies that come down with them. Did their luck just run out and now the taxpayer or hospital has to bear the costs? Neither of those should be acceptable.

 

That and health care costs have been rising above the rate of inflation for 40 years so until you perfectly control that part, the rising costs hurts everyone.

[StrangeSox]

CBO won't have an estimate done before the Republicans rush this bill to a vote, so Brookings took a stab at it.

 

-21,000,000 thrown off of health insurance by 2026, which they say is likely an understatement

-32,000,000 thrown off of health insurance for 2027 and later

-Higher premiums in many parts of the country

-Insurance death spirals in parts of the country, leaving no insurers at all

-Reduced benefits in many states

-Pre-existing condition discrimination in many states

 

 

 

[RockRaines]

These politicians are pathetic.