According to Bloomberg News two hours ago reports that the C.B.O says that an Obama repeal will leave 32 million uninsured by 2018,2020. Now is that not sweet? Remember Trump saying, we will have a wonderful tremendous healthcare law. Bullshit from start to finish.

Tugger wrote:

seb146 wrote:

But that WILL happen if you control immigration. Again: Americans can not survive picking berries in the field. Even if we make enough per hour, the prices of everything else goes up so that makes everything out of reach again. You don't understand basic economics. Or maybe it is immigration you don't understand. Illegals work the fields here because they are paid more here than their home country. Fine. Does that mean Americans should settle for those extraordinarily low wages and pray the markets react accordingly?

I disagree. Controlling immigration does not mean you do not allow needed workers from entering to do needed work. It means you control that process. And a big part of that control would be enable if employers were held accountable to ensure the correct process was followed by those they employ.

You are arguing a point that doesn't make sense.

Tugg

I can agree with your idea. I can not agree with Dreadnought's idea. He thinks that if we completely close our borders, that will make are unemployment near zero because Americans will gladly take those lowly field worker jobs and get paid near nothing and be grateful. That is how I have always read his opinions on immigration.

WarRI1 wrote:

According to Bloomberg News two hours ago reports that the C.B.O says that an Obama repeal will leave 32 million uninsured by 2018,2020. Now is that not sweet? Remember Trump saying, we will have a wonderful tremendous healthcare law. Bullshit from start to finish.

Did they have an insurance before Obamacare?

Tugger wrote:

seb146 wrote:

But that WILL happen if you control immigration. Again: Americans can not survive picking berries in the field. Even if we make enough per hour, the prices of everything else goes up so that makes everything out of reach again. You don't understand basic economics. Or maybe it is immigration you don't understand. Illegals work the fields here because they are paid more here than their home country. Fine. Does that mean Americans should settle for those extraordinarily low wages and pray the markets react accordingly?

I disagree. Controlling immigration does not mean you do not allow needed workers from entering to do needed work. It means you control that process. And a big part of that control would be enable if employers were held accountable to ensure the correct process was followed by those they employ.

You are arguing a point that doesn't make sense.

Tugg

i think you are mistaking immigration control with wage control. As long as you can pay illegals less than a US citizen needs to live a life they find going to work for attractive, there will be illegal workers. If you disagree you would need to explain why you can buy drugs. They are illegal after all and both sides of the equation get heavily prosecuted.

Mandatory prison sentence instead of fines and forfeit of their companies for employers that do it systematically of course would also help. Paying below minimum wage and unpaid overtime should be treated as organized fraud. Different from drugs demand, demand for illegal workers is easily controlled.

best regards
Thomas

DocLightning wrote:

But this idea that the GOP will steer the ACA into the ground JUST SO THEY CAN BLAME THE OPPOSITION is awful. .

Well, todays GOP would have ´happily used Pearl Harbor to capture the White House and given Hawaii as a gift of gratitude to the Japanese. Killing a few tens of thousands US citizens won´t phase them a bit.

best regards
Thomas

Some right wing pundits are using wording that is very disturbing to me. They complain about the CBO score that millions will lose coverage under "repeal and replace" or "simple repeal" but pundits are saying those millions "...choose not to buy insurance..." We would "choose not to buy" because we can not afford it.

What still gets lost in all of this is the fact that the core tenet of the ACA, the mandate that drives participation and revenue, exemplifies the most cherished of traditional Republican values..that people should pay for their own shit vs. living off the backs of others. That's what happens when 32M uninsured people show up at the emergency room and force the rest of us to pay the cost. Under the ACA those people now contribute to their own eventual medical expenses and get better care for their participation.

This is why Republicans in Massachusetts invented the predecessor to the ACA in the first place. Remember that inconvenient truth? Now you have all these mindless Fox sheep screaming about Socialism and individual rights. And a yet all those idiots buy home and car insurance without squeaking a peep. Same concept and yet you really could go your whole life without ever filing a car or home claim, but you'll never do that with your healthcare.

Maybe this is what it takes though to get our government back to the center and bipartisan governance again (even if it's still confined to the secrecy of the Cloak Room who cares). If the extreme hypocrisy of the President and Senate leaders leads to the skull-crushing polls we now see coming out of pollsters across the political spectrum (even Rasmussen says Trump is a Category 1 AAA asshole), it could be well worth this journey into hell .

tommy1808 wrote:

DocLightning wrote:

But this idea that the GOP will steer the ACA into the ground JUST SO THEY CAN BLAME THE OPPOSITION is awful. .

Well, todays GOP would have ´happily used Pearl Harbor to capture the White House and given Hawaii as a gift of gratitude to the Japanese. Killing a few tens of thousands US citizens won´t phase them a bit.

Comments like this (which have been frequent from you) are obscene, and do nothing to further discussion.

If you have nothing of value to contribute, please consider remaining silent.

Everyone who has spent much time here knows that you can and do make valuable contributions to discussions.

Please continue to do so.

Here's how Trump cares for Americans looking for a good job and decent wage:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post ... 9579f76999

To be a Republican supporter of this guy you really have to suspend your brain.

wingman wrote:

Here's how Trump cares for Americans looking for a good job and decent wage:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post ... 9579f76999

To be a Republican supporter of this guy you really have to suspend your brain.

I'm sorry, does that have something to do with healthcare?

Good question. I honestly didn't see a direct connection myself but the guys went off on an immigration tangent below and I have to assume one or more people were arguing that Trump was the man to solve immigration and healthcare. Turns out that like steel sourcing he's full of caca doody, as this story points out.

And maybe these positions would have been filled by unemployed United States citizens without healthcare coverage. The final assumption being that Trump hotels offer health insurance to their lowest wage earners. I don't know the answer to that.

So a tenuous connection at best but the topic had been raised already.

seahawk wrote:

Did they have an insurance before Obamacare?

Most of them didn't, no. And that's about 10% of the US population.

As the debate over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare drags on into another week, Senator Rand Paul has spoken out against GOP leaders, saying that they are not giving conservatives anything they have asked for.

“Conservatives are getting squat” Paul said in an interview with Fox & Friends:

Senator Paul also stated that there is “probably nobody in Congress more for repealing and replacing all of ObamaCare” than he is.

“I campaigned on it … but what they’re putting forward isn’t repeal and it becomes a huge insurance bailout,” Paul exclaimed.

Paul said he needs “at least assurance we’re going to have one vote on what conservatives promised, which was a clean repeal of Obamacare.”

Today's vote in the Senate showed why I don't respect McCain anymore, despite his experience.

How is it possible that you vote to open debate on passing a bill in a partisan manner before you take to the floor to speak out against it? If you truly believe in "regular order" and passing bills in a bipartisan manner, you would have voted "no" until you're guaranteed "regular order" in the Senate (which I would assume would mean that any bill considered is dead until it has public hearings, is scored by the CBO, and Democrats are given a chance to contribute to it). Today showed that he stands for nothing and will vote with party over principle.

McCain voted for a vote aka "democracy" then voted against the text aka "courageous, sticking to his beliefs", I don't think most people will look beyond that.

I love how liberals always want to boil the discussion down to how many people would end up uninsured; leaving the effects of ObamaCare on those that ARE insured completely out of the equation like the people who actually pay for their coverage have no rights? Also, a very disturbing thing I have noticed is that the people most invested pro ObamaCare are Europeans who have absolutely zero touch points with OCare. They just think they can impose their health care standards on other people, and I am sure they are the same people who found it grossly inadequate that the US tried to impose their idea of a democracy on Middle Eastern countries. The double standards of the left are truly deplorable.

Make no mistake, the Republican Health Care Bill is a total joke and a disaster waiting to happen; not to mention a huge insurance bailout that the insurance companies don't even need.

But that doesn't make ObamaCare any better. It's a trainwreck and has to go.

seb146 wrote:

Some right wing pundits are using wording that is very disturbing to me. They complain about the CBO score that millions will lose coverage under "repeal and replace" or "simple repeal" but pundits are saying those millions "...choose not to buy insurance..." We would "choose not to buy" because we can not afford it.

That doesn't compute.

The CBO estimates show that 15 million people buy health insurance today because they are legally mandated to do so. Clearly, those 15 million people can afford it but don't find it a good value. That isn't surprising since Obamacare drove premiums and deductibles sky high.

wingman wrote:

What still gets lost in all of this is the fact that the core tenet of the ACA, the mandate that drives participation and revenue, exemplifies the most cherished of traditional Republican values..that people should pay for their own shit vs. living off the backs of others.

No. Forcing Americans to buy a financial product - health insurance - against their will is not a "Republican value."

wingman wrote:

That's what happens when 32M uninsured people show up at the emergency room and force the rest of us to pay the cost. Under the ACA those people now contribute to their own eventual medical expenses and get better care for their participation.

No. That hypothesis was tested and failed. In the objective studies comparing those who participated in ACA plans versus those who remain uncovered, there was no improvement in primary care and the ACA participants visited the emergency room more.

wingman wrote:

This is why Republicans in Massachusetts invented the predecessor to the ACA in the first place. Remember that inconvenient truth?

No. Republicans did not "invent" the Massachusetts health care system. The so-called "Romneycare" reform was passed by a Democratic super-majority in the MA statehouse. Romney vetoed key provisions in the bill only for the legislature to override his veto.

DfwRevolution wrote:

seb146 wrote:

Some right wing pundits are using wording that is very disturbing to me. They complain about the CBO score that millions will lose coverage under "repeal and replace" or "simple repeal" but pundits are saying those millions "...choose not to buy insurance..." We would "choose not to buy" because we can not afford it.

That doesn't compute.

The CBO estimates show that 15 million people buy health insurance today because they are legally mandated to do so. Clearly, those 15 million people can afford it but don't find it a good value. That isn't surprising since Obamacare drove premiums and deductibles sky high.

But did premiums go up because of ACA or did they go up because insurance companies found another way to make a profit?

Also, just because 15 million are now insured under ACA does not mean they could afford it before. Health care was not a good value before and it is a worse value now because of insurance companies jacking up prices. Plus, there are 32 million who would lose coverage under the Republican plan. How is that better? To have insurance companies charge what they are charging now, or more, AND have 32 million more people lose health care coverage?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/30/news/ec ... index.html

DfwRevolution wrote:

No. Forcing Americans to buy a financial product - health insurance - against their will is not a "Republican value."

So you are against auto and home insurance yes? Think about that..a single claim would potentially bankrupt a family in either product category. But as I pointed out (and this is purely a guess I admit), millions of Americans probably go their entire lives without filing an auto or home claim. Do you pretend to believe that there are Americans that will go their entire lives without incurring healthcare costs? I simply do not understand the difference between support for insurance in two cases but not in another. It defies all logic. Maybe I missed the news that the GOP is going to issue new legislation making Auto and Home insurance optional, is that the case?

The ACA is broken and needs fixing, I don't argue that point. Healthcare costs are rising rapidly and continue to be a massive burden on our population. But why? Why do other countries have such excellent care at half the cost per capita and their citizens live longer and healthier lives with 100% coverage (just like we require of Auto and Home owners)? Are those not examples to learn from and emulate? And below I share an interesting link which supports the case for increased participation and government regulation/oversight..are these facts incorrect or is it true that healthcare costs did indeed rise faster prior to the ACA than after? We can fix this program, and rename it after Trump if that will mollify the partisans, but more people being insured is an excellent step in the right direction. The United States stands alone in the industrialized world attempting to rely so heavily on for profit healthcare and there is not a single example in this world where a country has successfully managed its healthcare in such a way. Why do we think it will work here? It won't and it never has. So let's fix what we have, it's the right thing to do.

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower ... der-obama/

seb146 wrote:

But did premiums go up because of ACA or did they go up because insurance companies found another way to make a profit?

Both? Obamacare introduced massively complex and interlocking rules that raised the compliance costs and coverage costs. Likewise, mandating that people buy a product certainly doesn't help control price.

seb146 wrote:

Also, just because 15 million are now insured under ACA does not mean they could afford it before. Health care was not a good value before and it is a worse value now because of insurance companies jacking up prices.

Again, that just doesn't make sense by definition. Those 15 million people can afford Obamacare insurance policies today because they are buying them. As premiums have gone up, then it follows that those 15 million people also could have purchased them pre-Obamacare when insurance was cheaper.

wingman wrote:

DfwRevolution wrote:

No. Forcing Americans to buy a financial product - health insurance - against their will is not a "Republican value."

So you are against auto and home insurance yes?

No. Where did I ever say I was "against" auto and home insurance? What a bizarre inference.

I said Republicans are against forcing Americans to buy a financial product. You aren't forced to purchase auto and home insurance simply because you exist as a human being.

wingman wrote:

Do you pretend to believe that there are Americans that will go their entire lives without incurring healthcare costs?

Non sequitur. It doesn't follow that because people may incur healthcare costs that the most rational way to pay for that care is via an insurance scheme. Insurance is a risk versus reward decision. Everyone's risk and reward criteria will be different. A blanket mandate that all living Americans should buy a financial product is irrational.

wingman wrote:

Maybe I missed the news that the GOP is going to issue new legislation making Auto and Home insurance optional, is that the case?

Again: there is no federal law that mandates that you must purchase auto and home owners insurance.

States require you to hold an auto insurance policy if you own an automobile. But, no law requires you to own an automobile. Likewise, you can own a home without an insurance policy. Banks will require you to hold an insurance policy while the house is under mortgage so that the collateral is protected.

wingman wrote:

The United States stands alone in the industrialized world attempting to rely so heavily on for profit healthcare and there is not a single example in this world where a country has successfully managed its healthcare in such a way. Why do we think it will work here? It won't and it never has.

I really don't care what the rest of the world does. I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first. Our healthcare sector today isn't remotely close to a free market. Profit is one of the most powerful incentives for driving cost efficiency, innovation, and quality.

DfwRevolution wrote:

I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first.

And you don't want the best system for most of the people? But instead just religiously holding on to a free market. That sounds more like a dogma than anything else.

Dutchy wrote:

DfwRevolution wrote:

I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first.

And you don't want the best system for most of the people? But instead just religiously holding on to a free market. That sounds more like a dogma than anything else.

Of course I want the best system for the most people. That's why I want a free market. Free markets consistently provide the best services for the lowest costs.

Is that a "religious dogma" of mine? Nope. I specifically said I would consider alternatives, but only after we disprove what should be the most obvious starting point.

DfwRevolution wrote:

Dutchy wrote:

DfwRevolution wrote:

I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first.

And you don't want the best system for most of the people? But instead just religiously holding on to a free market. That sounds more like a dogma than anything else.

Of course I want the best system for the most people. That's why I want a free market. Free markets consistently provide the best services for the lowest costs.

Is that a "religious dogma" of mine? Nope. I specifically said I would consider alternatives, but only after we disprove what should be the most obvious starting point.

But you can't accept anything until we have tried "free market". So I would say that is your DOGMA. We see free market incentives, again and again, fail within the healthcare system. For you, it might be the most obvious solution, but for me it isn't. Healthcare isn't a market, what would you be prepared to pay to save your life? Or when you had an accident, are you compare ambulance services first? google perhaps whom has had the best reviews? Does whom offer the cheapest service?

Do you believe we should have a free market for fires and thus fire-departments?

Dreadnought wrote:

casinterest wrote:

Where did you pull the 10% number? The bottom FORTY percent have .2% of the wealth in the US.

Why are you talking about wealth? The amount in your savings account or the value of your home has little to do with whether you can afford monthly insurance payments. BTW the bottom 40% earns about 8% of total wages. Duh. If they earned 40% they wouldn't be bottom 40, right. Pointless.

casinterest wrote:

We have to subsidize doe to the upper wealth members controlling so much of the wealth in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in ... ted_States

Put down your Karl Marx books and get a real education. The fact that someone is rich does not mean that someone else is poor - or that he somehow is rich at the expense of someone else.

And again, you are conflating wealth with earnings.

casinterest wrote:

They aren't in the US, so they blame the ACA for their loss of insurance? They would have lost their Cadillac plan even without the ACA. The costs were spiraling. Note that his letter said costs. Their case is also one where they chose to retire outside of the US. Theirs is an issue where the private company decided to not honor their Cadillac plan. Don't blame the ACA for that issue.

He worked in the US for that company the whole time. That decision did not come out of the blue. There were discussions, shareholders meetings, roundtables etc held by the company with retirees and management, which (my dad attended) over a period of a couple of years deciding what to do with retiree benefit programs. It was 100% clear that ACA was the root cause of their plan becoming unsustainable - for the first time in that company's 150 year history, they were going to have to renig on retiree benefits that were promised.

While your parents enjoyed many years of a good program there would have been "unpleasant" price increases over his years. Bush II first 4 years saw my one man company's premiums double and larger policies felt doubling before Bush ii left office. Your dad's employer would have been discussing premium increases long before Obama took office.

BTW, ObamaCare outlawed Pre-existing Conditions Exclusions - pity Switzerland didn't have that standard.

casinterest wrote:

It is a success, because without the ACA, those families would have seen the increase anyway as it is the costs of medical care that are out of control. Not the fact that we have more insured.

Pure supposition on your part. ACA mandated a massive increase in required coverage. Basic economic laws such as third party payer effects require that result in a massive cost increase that would otherwise not have happened. Yes, costs were increasing before ACA, but deductibles were lower, and I think the scope of the increases smaller.

Our problem with medical inflation starts with Cost Shifting. Take a look at a busty ER in any city and guess how many waiting 5 hours do not have health insurance. Their costs are going to be dumped on you and your insurance premiums - just as they have been dumped on your parents premiums. If you fail to STOP cost shifting you are heading to hyper inflation in medicine - especially if the GOP adds 24 million Medicare patients to cost shifting.

BTW, my monthly health insurance premiums when I was traveling to Australia was $550 per individual in the US and $88 for me in Australia - and only the Aussie policy included Dental. Aussies have killed cost shifting in the only available method.

DfwRevolution wrote:

Of course I want the best system for the most people. That's why I want a free market. Free markets consistently provide the best services for the lowest costs

You seem to be under the impression that the free market will react to what is in the consumers' best interests. If that were the case, prices for just about anything would go down. That may be true in the short-term when there's competition, but eventually some firms get eaten up. Only the strongest survive, and in that sense they're poised to increase prices because they can. If you advocate for free market, then you are OK with monopolies forming (any form of government intervention or limitation is NOT a free market no matter how much you can say that it still is). If the airline industry has shown us anything is that a survival of the fittest ends up hurting consumers at the expense of lining the pockets of a small group of people. And because the other alternatives to air travel are slow (train or car), we have no choice but to shut up and put up...the same with healthcare. What is the alternative to it? No healthcare?

So for an industry as big and delicate as healthcare, a free market is great in theory, but in practice, will never work and for the many patients who can't afford to take any chances, healthcare in a free market should never be given a chance unless you grandfather existing plans into the new deregulations and don't force people to accept something else.

DfwRevolution wrote:

I really don't care what the rest of the world does. I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first. Our healthcare sector today isn't remotely close to a free market. Profit is one of the most powerful incentives for driving cost efficiency, innovation, and quality.

So please explain to me how it is that the US has the heaviest reliance on a "for profit" healthcare system in the industrialized (that point is simply irrefutable) and yet we have the least efficient system at the same time. Do you not see a correlation? We have multiple payers and insurers competing for your business, we have hospitals, specialists and drug companies competing for your business, we have the liberty to choose whatever drug, plan, hospital, doctor we want to and yet the truth is that we pay double every other major country in the world for that privilege. To refuse to see that many of our peer nations have devised healthcare systems that run circles around ours day and night and for the most part with profit motive at the back end of the list of priorities is the very definition of insanity. I'm a believer in free markets myself, but I'm smart enough to know that they don't work in every application, and they sure as shit don't work in healthcare. The very opposite is true, our grand experiment in free market healthcare has been a catastrophic failure. We pay more, live shorter, lower quality lives and have millions of citizens incurring massive costs without coverage for what? Because you think it's cool to pay more for less? It doesn't work, this country is the living shining proof of complete and total failure in the application of free markets in healthcare.

And when you say you don't care what the rest of the world does, you admit that you think we have nothing to learn from others. I'm glad our forefathers and free market companies like Boeing, GE, Google, Microsoft, Dow, Exxon etc etc ad nauseum don't share your ignorant view on learning and open-mindedness.

Look how the US Federal Govt. actually runs the VA. In a nutshell you have the good and bad of Govt. run Healthcare. And you think it would be all different if was expanded to all citizens??

DfwRevolution wrote:

seb146 wrote:

But did premiums go up because of ACA or did they go up because insurance companies found another way to make a profit?

Both? Obamacare introduced massively complex and interlocking rules that raised the compliance costs and coverage costs. Likewise, mandating that people buy a product certainly doesn't help control price.

Then fix it. Don't throw 23 million people under the bus.

DfwRevolution wrote:

seb146 wrote:

Also, just because 15 million are now insured under ACA does not mean they could afford it before. Health care was not a good value before and it is a worse value now because of insurance companies jacking up prices.

Again, that just doesn't make sense by definition. Those 15 million people can afford Obamacare insurance policies today because they are buying them. As premiums have gone up, then it follows that those 15 million people also could have purchased them pre-Obamacare when insurance was cheaper.

So why didn't they when it was supposedly cheaper?

DfwRevolution wrote:

Likewise, mandating that people buy a product certainly doesn't help control price.

Incorrect. The mandate is one of the things that does control price. Which is why if the GOP repeals the mandate costs are expected to soar to the point that millions of people will lose their health insurance.

DfwRevolution wrote:

Those 15 million people can afford Obamacare insurance policies today because they are buying them. As premiums have gone up, then it follows that those 15 million people also could have purchased them pre-Obamacare when insurance was cheaper.

Premiums have gone up for some people, but also down for others. There are millions of people who now have insurance who could not afford it before Obamacare.

DfwRevolution wrote:

It doesn't follow that because people may incur healthcare costs that the most rational way to pay for that care is via an insurance scheme.

No, it's not 'may incur', it's 'will incur'. Everyone is going to have healthcare costs at some point during their life. And because of that, healthcare cannot be a free market. In a free market, people have the choice to buy goods or not, but I don't have the choice to be a consumer of healthcare. I will, at some point, be forced to become a consumer. The problem is that I don't know when that will be. It could be tomorrow if I get hit by a bus crossing the street, or it could be decades from now. And when it does happen, I might not be able to shop around - I may have a condition that requires a very specific and expensive treatment. So an insurance scheme makes a lot of sense.

DfwRevolution wrote:

I really don't care what the rest of the world does. I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first.

We did try it. It's what we had prior to Obamacare, and it was a disaster. Despite Obamacare's flaws, we're in a better place now. The Republicans want to take us back to where we were before, and that's quite simply not acceptable.

When millions of people are kicked off insurance plans if ACA is repealed, do you righties/Republicans honestly believe health care companies will lower prices across the board?

Dutchy wrote:

DfwRevolution wrote:

I want a free market health care system and won't entertain any other alternatives until we try that first.

And you don't want the best system for most of the people? But instead just religiously holding on to a free market. That sounds more like a dogma than anything else.

And it is also a flat out wrong assumption to begin with. In a proper nation, where hospitals can not refuse to help, allowing people not to have health insurance distorts the market.

Forcing people to buy health insurance is about as distorting to the market as forcing construction companies to have helmets for its workers.

best regards
Thomass

wingman wrote:

DfwRevolution wrote:

No. Forcing Americans to buy a financial product - health insurance - against their will is not a "Republican value."

So you are against auto and home insurance yes? Think about that..a single claim would potentially bankrupt a family in either product category. But as I pointed out (and this is purely a guess I admit), millions of Americans probably go their entire lives without filing an auto or home claim. Do you pretend to believe that there are Americans that will go their entire lives without incurring healthcare costs? I simply do not understand the difference between support for insurance in two cases but not in another. It defies all logic. Maybe I missed the news that the GOP is going to issue new legislation making Auto and Home insurance optional, is that the case?

A car insurance is meant to protect a third party in case of an accident caused by the insured person. Healthcare does not protect third parties and therefore it should be a purely private decision with the state neither paying any tax money for providing a basic service nor forcing people into insurance deals.

seahawk wrote:

A car insurance is meant to protect a third party in case of an accident caused by the insured person. Healthcare does not protect third parties.

Healthcare protects 3rd parties. You needing to buy healthcare means i don´t have to subsidize your treatment when you fall ill without being able to pay. Unless you want to go the BMIs route and require hospitals to let anybody die that doesn´t have proof of sufficient funds.

best regards
Thomas

tommy1808 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

A car insurance is meant to protect a third party in case of an accident caused by the insured person. Healthcare does not protect third parties.

Healthcare protects 3rd parties. You needing to buy healthcare means i don´t have to subsidize your treatment when you fall ill without being able to pay. Unless you want to go the BMIs route and require hospitals to let anybody die that doesn´t have proof of sufficient funds.

best regards
Thomas

Sure, no insurance, no service - quite simple. Either that way or you have one common state regulated insurance. Everything between is a just a lie in the end.

seahawk wrote:

Sure, no insurance, no service - quite simple.

if i didn´t know you are provocative on purpose, it would be around the right time for a Max Liebermann quote.....

So, if you are unconscious, you die. Too bad....

best regards
Thomas

It is the ultimate idea of market regulated health care.

Seahawk, you cannot possibly be so obtuse. Car insurance covers many things beyond third party coverage. It includes things like crashing into immovable objects (like boulders and redwood trees). It includes roadside assistance, mechanical breakdown..have you ever read your car policy? Or right, maybe you refused to buy any and just ride around town like a complete imbecile. And just like car insurance, health insurance does indeed protect third parties. If you're a father of four earning a living wage and suffer a heart attack, then it actually covers a second, third AND fourth party. In your vision of utopia if that father had no coverage then the emergency care team would throw his prone body out into the parking lot where he would die in horrible pain (perhaps I've taken it too far and the 911 operator would've simply hung up after the wifey admitted papa had no Blue Cross). And then his wife and kids would...well, how exactly do they fare in your little fantasy? How long before you advocate shooting them in the back of the head just so you don't have to look at them anymore?

Your views are the result of a very sad and pathetic upbringing I guess.

On the floor of Senate this morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out the reason that America's Healthcare per capita cost is roughly TWICE as much as other industrialized nations, yet American do not receive TWICE the quality of healthcare as those in the other nations.

Sen. Sanders argument is that Health Care should be provided to all in the US with a single payer system.

Sen. Sanders remarked that Healthcare should *not* be a commodity.

Sen. Sanders said, that like others in other countries, that all should be covered.

I agree.

This BS of American's per capita cost being TWICE the cost as many other institutionalized nations per capita cost has got to be the POINT of TRUE Healthcare Reform.

TRUE HEALTHCARE REFORM --- IF not now....WHEN???

It appears that Rs are all about saving Health Insurance companies, and allowing Big Pharma to keep it's "Free Market" pricing alive and well, in the United States.

DIRECTFLT wrote:

On the floor of Senate this morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out the reason that America's Healthcare per capita cost is roughly TWICE as much as other industrialized nations, yet American do not receive TWICE the quality of healthcare as those in the other nations.

Sen. Sanders argument is that Health Care should be provided to all in the US with a single payer system.

Sen. Sanders remarked that Healthcare should *not* be a commodity.

Sen. Sanders said, that like others in other countries, that all should be covered.

I agree.

This BS of American's per capita cost being TWICE the cost as many other institutionalized nations per capita cost has got to be the POINT of TRUE Healthcare Reform.

TRUE HEALTHCARE REFORM --- IF not now....WHEN???

It appears that Rs are all about saving Health Insurance companies, and allowing Big Pharma to keep it's "Free Market" pricing alive and well, in the United States.

Then you are talking about kind of an American NHS, although I agree with you, don't think that will be achievable.

Dutchy wrote:

DIRECTFLT wrote:

On the floor of Senate this morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out the reason that America's Healthcare per capita cost is roughly TWICE as much as other industrialized nations, yet American do not receive TWICE the quality of healthcare as those in the other nations.

Sen. Sanders argument is that Health Care should be provided to all in the US with a single payer system.

Sen. Sanders remarked that Healthcare should *not* be a commodity.

Sen. Sanders said, that like others in other countries, that all should be covered.

I agree.

This BS of American's per capita cost being TWICE the cost as many other institutionalized nations per capita cost has got to be the POINT of TRUE Healthcare Reform.

TRUE HEALTHCARE REFORM --- IF not now....WHEN???

Then you are talking about kind of an American NHS, although I agree with you, don't think that will be achievable.

Of course it is achievable. It takes only a will to achieve it.

Not that it will be easy.

Americans have heard a litany of "horror stories" some of which might even have been true, about nationalized health care in other countries.

Yet our press and media are also full of horror stories right here in the good old USA.

I imagine that national health care programs vary to some degree from country to country. There is no sane reason why a true national program in the United States must emulate any other existing program. We can design our own, one that will promise to satisfy the vast majority of our citizens.

In the USA a national health care system could be funded totally by federal taxes OR by federal and state taxes OR some combination of taxes and insurance (similar to social security with "employer share" covering part of the costs).

A system for the USA must include both for-profit and non-profit health care providers (doctors, clinics, hospitals, HMOs).

A system for the USA must include reasonable but strict oversight/control of prescription drugs and medical devices.

The most difficult part of a national health plan for the USA will be getting a handle on the 50% of the costs taken up by the 5% of the consumers (mostly end-of-life care).

Somehow, a plan for the USA must be administered by a politically independent system operating solely under the authority of Congress (and the courts), and untouchable by the whims of the Executive Branch.

It should combine civilian and military health care (while providing for the specialized needs of military hospitals and treatment centers). Our military personnel and their families should not be treated as second-class citizens, and ALL hospitals should be administered by civilian managers.

If this be considered "socialized medicine" then so be it. Every person in this country deserves, as an undeniable right, prompt access to tha best medical care that society offers.

The ability to pay cannot be used to deny access to medical services to anyone.

What I DON'T want is for the Govt. to find "New" ways for the public to pay for OVER-priced Healthcare!!!

Expensive end-of-life healthcare... how do the other industrialized nations handle the cost of it ??

The General health of the citizens is more important than the specialized help.

IOW, you assure basic healthcare for all, and then if there's money left, you can attend to specialized care. My basic health should not have to be ignored so that someone can get complex and expensive at the end of their lives... Or something like that..

July 27, 2017: If the individual mandate were to be repealed and Americans were no longer required to purchase the Obamacare-mandated levels of health insurance coverage, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) believes that 15 million Americans would no longer purchase such coverage.

DIRECTFLT wrote:

What I DON'T want is for the Govt. to find "New" ways for the public to pay for OVER-priced Healthcare!!!

Expensive end-of-life healthcare... how do the other industrialized nations handle the cost of it ??

The General health of the citizens is more important than the specialized help.

IOW, you assure basic healthcare for all, and then if there's money left, you can attend to specialized care. My basic health should not have to be ignored so that someone can get complex and expensive at the end of their lives... Or something like that..

End of life is always the most expensive, more than half of all your medical expenses are in the last 2 years or so. Nowadays some very specialized medicines are available but are ridiculously expensive, so we need to have a check on those.

All the lawsuits also cost a lot of money which would be better spent on health care.

Veteran or not, brain cancer or not, John McCain is a fraud and a jackass.

coolian2 wrote:

Veteran or not, brain cancer or not, John McCain is a fraud and a jackass.

Nothing subtle about you, is there?

wingman wrote:

What still gets lost in all of this is the fact that the core tenet of the ACA, the mandate that drives participation and revenue, exemplifies the most cherished of traditional Republican values..that people should pay for their own shit vs. living off the backs of others. That's what happens when 32M uninsured people show up at the emergency room and force the rest of us to pay the cost. Under the ACA those people now contribute to their own eventual medical expenses and get better care for their participation.

The huge point that is missed by everyone.

Right now I have two friends in hospital, neither have insurance, preferring to pay the fines than submit to Obama, one has had two spinal surgeries, the other 2 surgeries on her colon and 10 days on life support.....

They have no way of paying the coming medical bills, no insurance to cover it, they will end up having to BK it and the hospital gets to recoup it's loses through charging people who do have insurance....

BobPatterson wrote:

coolian2 wrote:

Veteran or not, brain cancer or not, John McCain is a fraud and a jackass.

Nothing subtle about you, is there?

Publicly states he disagrees with the healthcare plan. Rushes from hospital to vote for it.
Then states he won't vote for it in it's current form. Votes for it in it's current form.

Yet he's a maverick? Are we sure he didn't have his spine removed instead of a blood clot?

It looks like the Trump administration is blackmailing the state of Alaska and Lisa Murkowski (R) over her No heath care vote.

https://www.adn.com/politics/2017/07/26 ... or-alaska/

BobPatterson wrote:

What Sen. McCain voted for was to permit legislation to advance for debate. It will go nowhere without major revision, which he calls for.

With all due respect Bob, do some more research. Yes, McCain voted to advance for debate. Then he took to the floor to cal for "regular order" and said he would not vote for the bill in its current form...before this tidbit happened.

Look closely and you'll see the dear Maverick voting for the BCRA (the second proposal the Senate submitted). He would later vote against a clean repeal.

einsteinboricua wrote:

BobPatterson wrote:

What Sen. McCain voted for was to permit legislation to advance for debate. It will go nowhere without major revision, which he calls for.

With all due respect Bob, do some more research. Yes, McCain voted to advance for debate. Then he took to the floor to cal for "regular order" and said he would not vote for the bill in its current form...before this tidbit happened.

Look closely and you'll see the dear Maverick voting for the BCRA (the second proposal the Senate submitted). He would later vote against a clean repeal.

Your tidbit link is to a motion to suspend budgetary discipline and McCain's side lost, the motion was defeated.

So what? Did you really mean some other vote?