The Way Forward: Repeal ObamaCare

[g5000]

the repubs have put up no viable alternative since Nixon was in office.

I agree. The GOP is currently under the control of liars, hypocrites, maniacs, and psychopaths. One of the reasons ObamaCare was passed was because the millions of parroting minions could not be troubled to actually study the issue. Instead, they relied on their masters who were pouring unadulterated piss and manufacturing bullshit by the metric ton for their consumption.

I doubt anyone besides myself to this day on this forum has even bothered to crack open the ACA and read any of it.

 

[Greenbeard]

I posted the links, fool, to the CBO projections. Nothing mythical about it.

Yes, mythical. The year-by-year projections are virtually identical, as the CBO themselves pointed out in their handy comparison chart. In fact, as they note, through the end of the 2019 projection window (the one you seem fixated on), costs are going to come in a bit below what they predicted in 2010.

I also posted the evidence of the union tax waivers. This boondoggle has been widely reported.

As already noted, that "widely reported" provision didn't actually make it into the law. That's why you had to go back and dig up a January 2010 article to find "evidence" of it. It came out in February and the legislation was signed in March.

Your talking points are years out of date. Surely there's a real case to be made at some point. Why don't you try and figure out what it is instead of peddling this drivel?

 

[francoHFW]

The CBO doesn't DO savings that haven't been proved, so their projections are way off. Unions have waivers until their contracts run out, 2018 AT MOST.

Remain calm, brainwashed functional 8 year old girls. LOL

 

[auditor0007]

Now let's talk about the costs to the states....

in my view, all of the drawbacks pale in comparison to the loss of essential freedom inflicted on us by PPACA. Giving up control of our personal health care decisions to government (and its corporate sponsors) is sheer insanity.

Not sure where you get the idea you are giving up control of your personal health care decisions to the government. Are you moving to Canada?

 

[FA_Q2]

I can’t stand Obamacare as much as anyone here but there are some base problems with canning the thing. First is the fact that you are fighting a HUGE lobby in that the insurance companies ended up with exactly what they wanted: a zero risk customer base. The second comes in the fact that the American public simply refuses to ever roll back an entitlement and this is not going to be much different. The real problem is that as soon as people start getting the subsidies, they are not going to want to give them up. Of course, then you have the fact that we need to drop something in its place as you have mentioned. The problem here though is getting enough people to not only want to repeal the old law, a president that will sign a new HC law in but also get enough of congress to agree on the new measures is all but an insurmountable task.

None of this should be construed as a call to give up BTW. That is not what I am getting at. We should continue to fight for MEANINGFUL change rather than keep something so damn destructive BUT I have no delusions on what I am going to end up with. Obamacare is as likely to be repealed as libertarians are of wining the next election in the house, senate and executive races.

ObamaCare has to be repealed because shopping for insurance in the new marketplaces is too attractive an option?

Yes. That is a HUGE problem because the ‘attractive’ force is not because the marketplaces are better or because they offer something more to the customer. It is because the taxpayers are footing the damn bill for those plans. Essentially, this is a power grab by the government to ensure that the VAST majority of customers are purchasing their plans through the government giving them total control over the individual insurance companies that are able to operate and the plans that they offer. The real impact of forcing people to pay for those plane through taxation whether or not they actually want to purchase them. If the market were superior then the government would not need to force you to pay only a portion of those plans but allow you to apply that subsidy to the plan that you want.

Have you not wondered why the government needs to bless the plans that people are allowed to get?

Lastly, the idea that the CBO is somehow going to get it right this time is rather dubious.
U.S. health plans have history of cost overruns - Washington Times

In 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance program of Medicare - the federal health care program for the elderly and disabled - would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual cost that year was $67 billion.

In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee said the entire Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion.

In 1987, Congress projected that Medicaid - the joint federal-state health care program for the poor - would make special relief payments to hospitals of less than $1 billion in 1992. Actual cost: $17 billion.

The CBO is terrible at projecting long term costs. They might be accurate for a few years (that is even in doubt) but if you really think that 10 or 20 years from now the estimates are even remotely accurate then I have some bridges that you would REALLY be interested in.

Of worthy note here is that all your cost graphs are complete guesses by the CBO as well. Currently, as we have no actual data to go on yet, there is nothing concrete in what this is actually going to cost. We likely are not going to really be able to verify the accuracy of anything that the CBO states for at least 5 years when some sort of trend can be established.

 

[Claudette]

As I've said many time. The ACA is going to be anything but affordable.

G has the right idea. Make buying HC insurance like buying car, house and any other type of insurance you might buy.

Open it up across the country. Let the hc companies compete against each other. Prices will come down.

The Dems passed the POS bill without even reading it.

That should tell you all you need to know about the ACA and what the hell its going to cost you as a taxpayer.

 

[Bfgrn]

Now let's talk about the costs to the states....

in my view, all of the drawbacks pale in comparison to the loss of essential freedom inflicted on us by PPACA. Giving up control of our personal health care decisions to government (and its corporate sponsors) is sheer insanity.

Your 'personal health care decision', if that decision is to opt out of buying health insurance inflicts cost on every person whose 'personal health care decision' is to buy health insurance.

You are what the Heritage Foundation called a 'free rider' when they designed the individual mandate.

 

[LoneLaugher]

I do not believe that a person aged 18-24 with an income of 30k will have to pay 2300 per year for health insurance under the ACA. If you believe that, you might have an affinity for post-it notes.

 

[Mac1958]

The Way Forward: Repeal ObamaCare

Repeal away.

Provided you immediately replace the ACA with something that ensures all Americans have health insurance coverage.

Don’t just come with a complaint, come with a solution as well.

... and this is the problem.

This horrific pig of a law deserves to be rolled up into a tight little ball and shoved down a big toilet, but that wouldn't fix the significant problem we're facing with our health care system. Wait, make that "systems" - Insured care, Medicare, Medicaid, VA and indigent care. Five fucking "systems", as if there are five different kinds of humans.

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently. Their argument for repeal loses its luster when it becomes clear they're afraid to allow the government into any little nook or cranny, even though the government runs Medicare and Medicaid, even though the uninsured are costing all of us billions a year.

Do we really need FIVE fucking health care "systems"?

How about one foundational universal system that covers preventive and diagnostic care so that we can dramatically reduce health care costs by catching and identying small issues before they become big issues?

How about a supplementary system (like Medicare Supplements) that allow insurance companies to compete for 300 million clients who can buy up their coverage to their heart's content? A system that would be personal and portable so that we could take the huge fucking burden of providing health coverage off the backs of American business?

One two-part system that would eliminate the massive bureaucracies of running five. Lowering health care costs. Taking a massive monkey off the backs of American business. Catching problems earlier.

But no, the GOP is too concerned with their fundraisers and being re-elected, too afraid to be called a RINO or a commie by the hardcore right.

All the fucking answers to fucking health care problem are out there, our "leaders" are just too fucking afraid to run with them. They want to keep their precious gubmit jobs.

So we're stick with this fucking pig of a disaster. Well done.

Great. Now I'm all pissed off.

.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Well said, Mac.

People like me are not in love with Obamacare. We'd much rather have something simpler...as you have called for. But we know that it is far superior to doing nothing about the problem.

If you'd go a step further and call for the elimination of a profit motive in health care altogether....we might be on the same page.

 

[Bfgrn]

The Way Forward: Repeal ObamaCare

Repeal away.

Provided you immediately replace the ACA with something that ensures all Americans have health insurance coverage.

Don’t just come with a complaint, come with a solution as well.

... and this is the problem.

This horrific pig of a law deserves to be rolled up into a tight little ball and shoved down a big toilet, but that wouldn't fix the significant problem we're facing with our health care system. Wait, make that "systems" - Insured care, Medicare, Medicaid, VA and indigent care. Five fucking "systems", as if there are five different kinds of humans.

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently. Their argument for repeal loses its luster when it becomes clear they're afraid to allow the government into any little nook or cranny, even though the government runs Medicare and Medicaid, even though the uninsured are costing all of us billions a year.

Do we really need FIVE fucking health care "systems"?

How about one foundational universal system that covers preventive and diagnostic care so that we can dramatically reduce health care costs by catching and identying small issues before they become big issues?

How about a supplementary system (like Medicare Supplements) that allow insurance companies to compete for 300 million clients who can buy up their coverage to their heart's content? A system that would be personal and portable so that we could take the huge fucking burden of providing health coverage off the backs of American business?

One two-part system that would eliminate the massive bureaucracies of running five. Lowering health care costs. Taking a massive monkey off the backs of American business. Catching problems earlier.

But no, the GOP is too concerned with their fundraisers and being re-elected, too afraid to be called a RINO or a commie by the hardcore right.

All the fucking answers to fucking health care problem are out there, our "leaders" are just too fucking afraid to run with them. They want to keep their precious gubmit jobs.

So we're stick with this fucking pig of a disaster. Well done.

Great. Now I'm all pissed off.

.

Mac1958: "The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while."

They have one...it is called Obamacare. It is a carbon copy of the 1993 Republican plan that was authored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. It manifested in 2006 when Romneycare was passed in Massachusetts. It was called 'Responsible National Health Insurance'

As former George W. Bush speechwriter told us after Obama and the Democrats passed health care reform, Republicans "At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994."

Frum went on to say: "Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."

As a matter of fact, during the health care debates in 2009, scholars at the American Enterprise Institute had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

The Heritage Foundation didn't 'drop' any of their ideas. The only thing that changed was that the President and party who passed the Republican/conservative/Heritage Foundation law was named Obama and he is a Democrat. Those Heritage Foundation ideas are alive and well and manifested in law in 2006 called Romneycare, which is almost identical to the law you call Obamacare.

Actually, in 1993 when then-President Clinton was attempting to reform healthcare, Republicans were opposed Clinton’s idea of an employer mandate. They supported the idea of an individual mandate. An individual mandate, the Republicans argued, would be a “free-market solution” to reform healthcare, part of a “social contract” that would help people take responsibility for themselves and avoid the immorality of freeloading off the government. Clinton’s plan, on the other hand, was seen as a “true government take-over” of healthcare, the worst form of the dreaded “socialized medicine.”

Move ahead to 2006 and The Heritage Foundation...

The Massachusetts Health Care Law was based on Conservative Ideas to take the ‘burden‘ off of the tax payer and put Health Insurance back in the Private Market.

In 2006: The Heritage Foundation said this about RomneyCare - “…one that’s clearly consistent with conservative values.”

They also said this about RomneyCare: “Those who want to create a consumer-based health system and deregulate health insurance should view Romney’s plan as one of the most promising strategies out there.”

They further said this, “Innovative mechanism to promote real consumer choice.”

In fact, when Romney signed the Massachusetts Healthcare Law in 2006, it was touted by many healthcare experts, and media outlets as a “conservative answer” to the healthcare crisis.

Romney is occasionally asked by the more conservative/libertarian voters, why he used an individual mandate. Romney replies:

“The key factor that some of my libertarian friends forget is that today, everybody who doesn’t have insurance is getting free coverage from the government. And the question is, do we want people to pay what they can afford, or do we want people to ride free on everyone else. And when that is recognized as the choice, most conservatives come my way.”

To Romney, the mandate that all individuals buy health insurance represented the conservative ideal of personal responsibility. Romney believed that whenever possible, individuals should take care of themselves, and not rely on the government for assistance. Too many people had been receiving “free” health care from the government even though many of those individuals could afford to pay for it themselves. ref. ref.

Mitt's Fit - The Heritage Foundation

Just more reason we need to go to a single payer. THEN, if doctors don't like it, they can move to Zimbabwe.

High health care costs
Who's to blame?

Health-cost trends shows that these players, in roughly descending order, contributed the most to rising costs:

1) Hospitals and doctors. Doctors and hospitals account for by far the largest share, 52 percent in 2006, of all national health spending. There's abundant evidence that some of that spending is unnecessary. Under the present system, hospitals and doctors earn more money by doing costly interventions than by keeping people healthy. And more medical care doesn't necessarily mean better care, according to research on Medicare expenditures by the Dartmouth Medical School's Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

2) Drug companies. Prescription drugs account for only one-tenth of total health-care expenditures. But drug spending has increased as a share of overall expenditures over the past decade.

3) Insurance companies. Health-insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation or workers' earnings over the past decade, in parallel with the equally rapid rise in overall health costs. Industry spending on administrative and marketing costs, plus profits, consumes 12 percent of private-insurance premiums.

4) Politicians and government regulators. Although the government directly controls only 46 percent of national health spending, many of its policies affect the bottom line of the health-care industry, for example, by setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors on which private insurers base their rates, or by regulating health insurance. Between 1999 and 2006, the health-care lobby spent more than any other business sector, according to a study by the Institute for Health & Socio-Economic Policy, a nonprofit policy and research group.

5) Lawyers. Malpractice-insurance premiums and liability awards account for less than 2 percent of overall health-care spending, according to a 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office. Defensive medicine, the practice of ordering extra tests or procedures to protect against lawsuits, might add another few percentage points, according to some estimates.

6) Health-care consumers.

Health-care security, who is to blame for high costs

 

[ecinicola]

i can't believe that people are so blind as to what the Obamacare is going to do to them and their livelyhoods. I watched a video of people being questioned on the streets and several people didn't even know who the vice president was. And they didn't know anything about the IRS situation on the Benghasi issue. People are just totall unaware and ignorant on matters, and those people actually vote. No wonder we are in this bad situation.

 

[Greenbeard]

Yes. That is a HUGE problem because the ‘attractive’ force is not because the marketplaces are better or because they offer something more to the customer.

Of course it is. The vast and well-known deficiencies of the individual market are being corrected by the exchanges: the fragmentation; the lack of a reliable mechanisms for seeing all available choices in one place and allowing side-by-side comparisons of what plans cover, who's in their provider networks, how cost-sharing differs across options, and how the options stack up against each other on key performance indicators; the absence of any quality controls to ensure adequate benefits and accessible provider networks; the meaninglessness of prices in a market with no structure and thus the inability of consumers to send (and insurers to react to) price signals; the lack of consumer protection from the bad incentives insurers face in an unregulated market; and so on.

Consumers are in fact getting something: a market that actually works. And they're starting to take shape for the kickoff later this year:

Premiums drop, coverage expands in Washington's exchange

Despite predictions of rate shocks, most consumers in Washington state will actually see lower premiums and enhanced coverage when they buy insurance through the state's health insurance exchange.

Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler on Tuesday released rates proposed by insurers, including Premera Blue Cross, Lifewise, Group Health Cooperative, BridgeSpan and Molina Health Care of Washington, for health plans they will sell on the state-run online marketplace, called the Washington Health Plan Finder, reported the Spokesman-Review.

And those prices don't include federal subsidies available to consumers, so the premiums that consumers will pay actually will be less than the rates proposed.

"We're pleasantly surprised with the individual rates we've seen so far," Kreidler said. "In many cases, people will get better benefits and pay less--especially if they qualify for subsidies."

Premera had predicted 70% increases. Turns out that under the rates they've now released, a 21-year-old will see a 15% decrease next year for the same plan he has this year.

Meanwhile, Oregon's exchange is showing off how competition is supposed to work: Two Oregon insurers rethink 2014 premiums as state posts first-ever rate comparison

This is what competition looks like: One health insurer wants to charge $169 a month next year to cover a 40-year-old Portland-area non-smoker. Another wants $422 a month for the same standard plan.

The new health insurance marketplace envisioned by federal health reforms doesn't formally kick in until fall. But it already is taking shape – and consumers for the first time can compare, premium by premium, identical plans by different insurers.

Soon they'll be able to compare benefit-by-benefit as well.

On Thursday, a comparison of proposed 2014 health premiums became public online, causing two insurers to request do-overs to lower their rates even before the state determines whether they're justified.

The unusual development was sparked by a comparison that used to be impossible because plan benefits varied so widely. But under the federal reforms that take effect Jan. 1, health insurance is mandated and every insurer must offer certain standard plans.

Providence Health Plan on Wednesday asked to lower its requested rates by 15 percent. Gary Walker, a Providence spokesman, says the "primary driver" was a realization that the plan's cost projections were incorrect. But he conceded a desire to be competitive was part of it.

A Family Care Health Plans official on Thursday said the insurer will ask the state for even greater decrease in requested rates. CEO Jeff Heatherington says the company realized its analysts were too pessimistic after seeing online that its proposed premiums were the highest.

"That was my question when I saw the rates was, 'Can we go in and refile these?'" he said. "We're going to try to get these to a competitive range."

If the market were superior then the government would not need to force you to pay only a portion of those plans but allow you to apply that subsidy to the plan that you want.

Shoppers can apply their tax credit to any plan in the exchange they want.

]Lastly, the idea that the CBO is somehow going to get it right this time is rather dubious.

I'm not the one who brought up the CBO. A trillion dollars has melted off their Medicare cost projections for this decade over the past 3-4 years as empirical data trickled in, in part because they overestimated how quickly health costs would rise. So they can easily overestimate costs, as well as underestimate them.

The point is that what they've actually said has been mischaracterized in this thread.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Amazing. The Federal gubbamint set up a system that crushes individual choice and competition and now the gubbamint stooges working for Obama point that out as a "deficiency"

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[g5000]

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently.

I have solutions. See post 13.

 

[g5000]

I posted the links, fool, to the CBO projections. Nothing mythical about it.

Yes, mythical. The year-by-year projections are virtually identical, as the CBO themselves pointed out in their handy comparison chart. In fact, as they note, through the end of the 2019 projection window (the one you seem fixated on), costs are going to come in a bit below what they predicted in 2010.

Their 2010 projection included the years 2010 through 2014, which is a period before the full implementation of Obamcare when the real costs start to kick in. That is about as disingenuous as it gets.

Here is the CBOs projected 10 year cost after ObamaCare is fully implemented, and it is double the previous rosy projection:

$1.8 trillion cost over 10 years.

Here is how much it ADDS to the deficit after subtracting the cost cutting and taxes:

$1.363 trillion added to our national debt.

 

[g5000]

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently.

I have solutions. See post 13.

More solutions:

One third of the involuntarily uninsured are high school dropouts.

Liberals love it when the government enacts behaviorial modification programs. Tax smokers, tax polluters, tax "exploiters". Well, why are we rewarding people who are doing other harmful behaviors in ObamaCare by providing free health insurance to people who quit school? Hmmm....

That suggests to me Obama and the Democrats WANT people to encourage that behavior. They WANT people to drop out and live on the dole.


Any solution which addresses the uninsured problem MUST address the high school dropout problem. ObamaCare actually exacerbates one third of the factors affecting being medically uninsured.

Bogus.

 

[bendog]

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently.

I have solutions. See post 13.

That wasn't really a solution, and it points out the vapidity of the gop position (no personal offense intended). You proposed people should buy health insurance like other insurance. The workers not insured are lower income workers.

Now we in the gop could have proposed something both progressive and pushing personal responsibilty, like offering a 600 dollar tax credit for preventative care to around 40 million uninsured, which'd cost aroud 24 billion a year, which is a fraction of obamacare. Get people on generic blood pressure and statin meds, and you save money. If a person gets really sick, they'll end up on medicaid with, or without, obamacare.

But any smaller intitiative that actually might prove a benefit compared to Nancy Pelosi's dream bill is KENYAN MARXIST SOCIALISM and verbotten courtesy of Grover Norquist.

 

[g5000]

The GOP is great at screaming "repeal", but ask them for a clear and concise explanation of a replacement, and you may as well sit down a while. They don't have one, so they'll start babbling incoherently.

I have solutions. See post 13.

That wasn't really a solution, and it points out the vapidity of the gop position (no personal offense intended). You proposed people should buy health insurance like other insurance. The workers not insured are lower income workers.

The government has driven up the cost of insurance through its policies and through its participation in the market. You don't see the cost of auto, home, or life insurance skyrocketing at the same rate as health insurance.

ObamaCare does nothing to bend the cost curve down, and actually more deeply entrenches things which bend it up.

If you were able to buy your health insurance in a truly competitive market, the cost of insurance would drop. Under the current situation, the government does not allow you to buy from any insurance company you wish. And most people are hostage to whatever plan their company offers. This means your company is a tiny pool of customers up against the insurance company. You're totally fucked on cost. In turn, the insurance company is geographically limited, making it hostage to the healthcare industry on cost. All because as an active participant in that market, the government gets to write the rules for its private sector competitors! You don't see the government tying its hands the way it ties the hands of its competitors. How fucked up is that?

And raising the retirement age would have a tremendous impact on the federal budget. If you work five years longer, that is five years more you pay into Medicare and Social Security, and five years LESS you draw out from them. We have had more than a literal doubling of the entitlement load since Social Security was enacted because we are living decades longer than our ancestors.

 

[bendog]

yet the most efficient pricing mechanism in the US is medicare. I'm not arguing for, or against, govt insurance. However, your notion of low income workers footing their healthcare not only won't work here, but works nowhere in the developed world.

There are means to inject more competitiveness, and personal responsibiilty, but yours is not one of them. In fact the gop is also paralyzed into doing nothing positive.