Discussion: Congress Weighs Rescue Package For O'Care As Trump Admin Hacks Away At Market

The new HC plans come out on November 1st. Maybe a few Trump voters will take a peek at their “options” before they vote. Generally, however, these are the people that wait until the last 10 minutes to sign up and then have a WTF moment. Here in VA, a pretty big state, Cigna was the only option for the individual plans. If this is the case, it’s already single payer - just single private payer.

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These people are vile 25/8/366. That’s all I’ve got this morning.

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All of this while people suffer!! There are no words to express how outrageous they are!!

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Good thing we didn’t elect “Crooked Hillary.” Goodness knows what a mess she would have made of this country. I feel “greater” every day.

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Is this a budget fight Democrats could win, even if it meant a shutdown? Democrats fight GOP to keep health premiums from rising?

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Obamacare doesn’t need rescue. Obamacare WAS the rescue! People who need rescue now, are median-income families who can’t afford $2,000 a month for insurance.

Private insurance can’t make money without government subsidies plus one or more of the following:

cherry-picked, healthy patients
discriminatory pricing
routine denial of services
mandatory enrollment.

Employer-based insurance combined subsidized, pretax premiums with mandatory enrollment and routine claim denials, while cherry picking everyone who’s healthy enough to work. Without mandatory enrollment, healthy patients cherry pick themselves by going for the cheap premium. Then when they do get sick, they aren’t really covered.

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All true and well said, except at this point Obamacare does need rescue thanks to the GOP.

“Please, somebody help me cut this rope that I used to tie this person to the track! If you don’t help me cut the rope with this dull knife and then stick it in their back, they might get hurt by the train my friends are driving down the track right now!”

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Fuck insurance
Give me healthcare

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It’s almost as if Republicans were blatantly lying when they called ACA a job killing socialist monstrosity bordering on tyranny. Nah, they would never do something like that.

Besides not being any smarter than Louie Gohmert, Costello could very likely be out of a job this fall!

That $5 per month tax cut is looking pretty good right now, eh?

Especially with a trade war raising the price of everything, with insurance costs starting to soar while covering less, more out-of-pocket costs, a wall we’re now going to have to pay for, higher welfare for the defense industry and Middle East oil barons…

And Republicans have no plans to fix any of it.

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And don’t forget: it will cover everyone.

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The big problem for the repeal and replace crowd, or for that matter Trump with his easy to figure out in a few minutes (for a stable genius, anyway) system that would be better, cheaper and cover everyone is that there are many established versions in operation in all those other countries already that do all that. They are all necessarily a move in a more “socialized” direction: getting a social good to everyone. They can’t go that way, so they are stuck. When they came up with several tries at actually replacing, all their proposals were necessarily in the other direction, away from “socialism”. So they were all variously more expensive, worse, or both, and covered way fewer people. So no one other than themselves thought they were any good.

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Everything is so easy for the moron. The most recent example: trade war, which is so easy to win. Oh and the fuckin’ wall. So easy to build.

When the focus and goal is to protect the insurance companies, it is impossible to design a system for the benefit of the people. The focus is on the corporate bottom line, the value to stockholders, not on facilitating the delivery of quality care.

We know there are systems in other countries that work, and for less overall spending per person, better outcomes, lower mortality rates. We know people in other countries don’t go bankrupt when they have an unexpected medical issue.

The GOP doesn’t want a system like that, and that’s why it doesn’t matter to them that people get sicker, and poorer, under their system. They view the ACA as being too punitive to insurance companies, forcing them to pay for some services and screenings at no cost to the insured. Pharmaceutical companies - and increasingly, the hedge funds that own large stakes in them - are raking it in by jacking up the prices of medications to deliver fantastic returns to their stockholders.

If you have Netflix, check out the “Drug Short” episode of their “Dirty Money” series; it’s an eye-opener.

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As long as you are healthy or over 65, or rich, healthcare is someone else’s problem.

Unfortunately, I am none of those. I read Kristoff’s piece about how the Rohingya were being exterminated by means such as denial of health care. Kristoff called this genocide.

While I know what faces me is not genocide, and I hate drawing the parallel, I could not help it. My government takes away my employment( CDL medicalcard) of 33 years because of my health. My government will make me drain my savings because of my health. When my savings are gone, I will qualify for Medicaid. When I have less than $2000 in assets.

But what happens if Medicaid loses funding? Who knows what horrors the Republicans will let fly? You really think Democrats will win the midterms? The Republicans act as if they know they will win. I recognize the same arrogant confidence that I saw among Democrats in 2016 when everyone took for granted Hillary’s Presidency.

All I’m saying is when you are sick enough to lose your job, but not sick enough, or rich enough to keep the medical care you busted your ass working for your whole life, you see America as more like the Burmese government than the Canadian government. You see the parallels. It’s a parallel of intent by Republicans.

I know why suicides rates are climbing among people my age now. I can see clearly why Trump won. It’s the story of the pied piper. It’s the plot line of “The Music Man”
Trump offered hope,combined with the scapegoat. Hillary didn’t campaign to these people. People who are desperate clutch at any straw, and will cling to that hope.

We need a free baseline of medical care in this Country. We cannot consider ourselves a functioning government without that. While the Republicans are not the military junta of Myanmar, they are their spiritual kin in every way I can see. They are just “kinder and gentler” about it.

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Here’s some straight up BULLSHIT if anybody is interested:

One of the things I greatly value about this site is that it is led by a historian. Looking back, historians sort out the important events from the dross of human interactions with each other and the natural world. Few, however, ask in close-to-real-time what are those events?

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no

Shmegeggy: Gay strasheh di vantzen. Gay fayfen ahfen yam. (And bless your little heart!)